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COVER STORY: US
RETALIATION
Effective Counter-Attack
There are indications
that the Pentagon is contemplating the use of both air strikes as well
as ground troops. This is possibly because of the limited effectiveness
of the missile strikes in 1998. Though dramatic they failed to deter the
even more dramatic retaliation by the bin Laden group on September 11.
This option of going it alone is favoured by the more hawkish elements
in the Bush administration, such as Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld.
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NOT OUT: Firefighters raise a flag in the
wreckage of the World Trade Center
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According to most observers, however, the unilateral
Rumsfeld option is unlikely to be effective or completely successful if
it were to be launched exclusively from US sea-based platforms and airfields
in Europe and the Indian Ocean. They argue that a decisive and successful
strike would need logistical support to be based in countries surrounding
Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan in particular.
This is the rationale that has prompted the more
moderate elements in the Bush administration, such as Secretary of State
Colin Powell, to argue in favour of a second course of action: a multilateral
action by a "coalition of the willing". This would be similar
to the coalition that was created to strike Iraq following its occupation
of Kuwait. This option does not confine itself only to a military response,
but would include political, diplomatic and economic dimensions as well.
It is no coincidence that the chief architects of this option are Powell
and US Vice-President Richard Cheney, both of whom played a key role in
the establishment and the operations of both "Desert Shield"
and "Desert Storm".
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INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST ATTACKS
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 September
5, 1972: Terrorists belonging to Black September, a Palestinian
group, sneak into the Olympic Village in Munich, kill two Israeli
athletes and take nine hostage. The hostages and five terrorists
die following a failed rescue attempt.
DECEMBER 21, 1975: Top international terrorist
Carlos "The Jackal" holds 11 OPEC ministers and 59 civilians
hostage during an OPEC meeting in Vienna. Several hundred million
dollars are paid in ransom money and Carlos and his associates allowed
to flee.
AUGUST 8, 1984: The Irish Republican Army
bombs the Grand Hotel, venue of a Conservative Party conference,
at the seaside city of Brighton in England. Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher and her cabinet colleagues have a narrow escape but five
senior Tory politicians are killed.
DECEMBER 21, 1988: A Pan American Boeing
747 on its way from Frankfurt to New York is blown up over Lockerbie,
Scotland, by Libyan terrorists. 270 people including 11 on the ground
die.
APRIL 19, 1995: A truck bomb explodes
outside the federal building in Oklahoma City, US, ripping away
the north face of the nine-storeyed building. 168 people, including
scores of children in the building's second floor day care centre,
die.
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This multilateral option stands in stark contrast
to the early days of the present Bush administration. When Bush took charge
in January this year the US deliberately reversed the primarily multilateral
Clinton approach and embarked on a staunch unilateral path that saw Washington
reject the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases, abandon the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty, challenge the creation of the International Criminal
Court and suspend the normalisation of relations with North Korea.
Simultaneously, Washington also embarked on
an ambitious missile defence programme, against a less than obvious threat,
which endangered not only the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty
with Moscow but also prompted a new confrontation with Beijing. In short,
the new administration was confident that it could unilaterally achieve
absolute security, multilateralism be damned. The dastardly acts of September
11, however, exploded the myth of absolute security and starkly revealed
that even the world's only superpower cannot afford to go it alone. Multilateralism,
which until yesterday was being shunned like a millstone by a drowning
person, was now being embraced like a last straw.
In the days following the attacks in New York
and Washington, this option appears to be gaining ground. One indication
of this was the evocation of Article 5 by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) at the prompting of Powell. Article 5 categorically states that
an attack on any NATO member will be regarded as an attack on all NATO
members and that all the members reserve the right to retaliate against
the attacker. These are the same NATO allies with whom Bush had sharply
differed on the issue of missile defences and the presence of US troops
in the Balkans.
Another indication of the multilateral option
being strengthened is the support that the Powell plan has received from
both Democrat and Republican members of the Congress. Speaking on Larry
King Live, Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein urged the administration
to "work with NATO, Russia, China and moderate Arab states",
a sentiment endorsed by several of her Republican colleagues. Similarly,
Democrat Senator Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,
was practically gushing in his praise of Powell's success in rallying
the NATO allies.
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