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COVER STORY: US RETALIATION
Fusion Reaction
A "coalition of the willing" to fight terrorism
is being
talked of, and NATO, Russia, China and India are among likely members
By W.P.S. Sidhu in New York
It took less than
two dozen determined individuals, reportedly armed with nothing more sophisticated
than knives, to do what neither the combined military strength of the
German Third Reich and Imperial Japan during World War II nor the nuclear
might of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War could accomplish:
a crippling attack at the very centre of the United States' military and
economic power.
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EMERGENCY LANDING: President Bush walks out
of Air Force One at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska,
for a briefing on national security following the attacks
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For more than 24 hours the world's lone superpower
was under siege. Its president, unable to return to the capital during
the day, was forced to act like a fugitive; its airports, ports and border
crossings were sealed; and its overwhelming state-of-the-art military
machine ineffectively flexed its muscles against a stealthy enemy. The
sense of fear and panic was palpable. Noted New York Times columnist Maureen
Dowd: "It was chilling to see how unprepared those in charge of planning
seemed after years of warnings about just such an attack."
Indeed, since the end of the Cold War more Americans
(and for that matter Indians) have been killed in terrorist attacks-both
home-grown and foreign-than on the battlefield. In fact, as recently as
February this year a US national commission headed by former senators
Gary Hart and Warren Rudman warned of a catastrophic attack that would
cause either "mass destruction" or "mass disruption".
If the death toll from the events of September 11 runs into the thousands,
as New York's Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani warned grimly, then the attackers
would have achieved the unsavoury distinction of causing both mass destruction
and disruption by using unconventional means.
Although the US intelligence community was held
culpable by many in not being able to either prevent or pre-empt this
Tuesday's events, the defence of its horrific failure was even more disingenuous.
The intelligence agencies, which have a budget of well over $30 billion
(Rs 1,41,000 crore), claimed that this tragic lapse was on account of
their budgetary constraints. This is not the first time that such an argument
has been articulated; similar claims were made following the mistaken
bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
However, most experts agree that the problem
is not one of funding but a preference for "sigint" (technology-
based intelligence gathering) over the more hands-on "humint"
(field agents trained to infiltrate enemy groups and gather intelligence).
According to former director of the Central Intelligence Agency James
Woolsey this is largely due to the changes in the operational policies
of the agency, which now frowns upon recruiting spies from within terrorist
groups.
The intelligence failure apart, the September
11 episode also dramatically redefined the security landscape of the United
States. When President George W. Bush finally returned to Washington DC
and met with his cabinet, he no longer referred to the events as "terrorist
acts" but described them as "acts of war". In doing so
he unconsciously echoed the distinction that India too has been making
for nearly a decade between "terrorist acts" and "proxy
war" or, more recently, "cross-border terrorism" to describe
state-sponsored terrorism, which was apparent in the coordinated bombing
campaign in Mumbai in 1993 and is still evident in most of the Kashmir
Valley.
The difference, of course, is that while Bush
categorically resolved that the US "will make no distinction between
the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harboured them"
Indian leaders have often debated "hot-pursuit" without any
resolution, let alone action.
While there is no doubt that Bush has both the
political will and the military wherewithal to act upon his declaration
it is still not clear what form this action will take. In the short to
medium term, there are at least two possible options for him to consider.
First, that the US will go it alone and probably launch strikes at the
suspected locations of the terrorist camps, similar to its retaliatory
cruise missile strikes at locations in Afghanistan and Sudan following
the coordinated attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in
1998. This time too the indications are that Afghanistan in general and
the locations related to the Al-Qaida organisation (led by Osama bin Laden)
in particular are likely targets. However, the response is unlikely to
be confined only to missile strikes.
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