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208 of 225 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The latest chapter in the 'Great Game', October 29, 2004
In "America's Secret War", George Friedman, the chairman of Stratfor, a private intelligence and information service, guides us through the intricacies of the origins and consequences of what he calls the `Fourth Global War'.
He starts by comparing the war to a game of chess where, to the unknowledgeable, there are many possible opening moves, but to the initiated there are only a few. This is a book of current events and recent history. It is, by design, more informative than inspirational. Friedman has an opinion, not always expressed in his Stratfor reports, but it is not obvious. He claims, in the foreword that he is trying to be cold and objective, rather than passionate, and while he is successful in maintaining objectivity, his passion or intensity comes through.
He challenges conventional wisdom with his allegations that Desert Storm was not about Iraq, but about Iran and her challenge to Saudi Arabia over who will be the leader of the Moslem world. In the West, he says the war was seen as a perfect example of modern statecraft with proper objectives and an exit strategy'. It had something for everyone. It appealed to three different groups, and to each within their own geopolitical constructs. For the `cold-warrior' perception of global politics the war was the proper defense of a Cold-War ally. For those who have a more Kissingerian realpolitik interpretation of the world saw the war as the proper containment of Iraq and of Saddam in balance of power terms. Finally the `End of History' post-modernists viewed the war as an expression of the multi-lateral `new world' working together against a rogue state. All of these views combined to make this a popular war in the West. Friedman says that what was not appreciated in this view was that the perception in the Moslem world was wholly different. In his opinion, the Islamic world saw this intervention as anti-Islamic rather than anti-Saddam and by supporting this use of `infidel' troops to pursue war against other Moslems the Saudis pushed the anti-Saudi fundamentalist factions over-the-top. These factions recruited disaffected, newly trained, mujahedin empowered by their successful pursuit of the anti-Soviet Afghan war to create the anti-western Al Qaeda organization. Al Qaeda is a working intelligence organization that pursues the goals of toppling the current Islamic regimes that they see as illegitimate, creating an uprising in the Moslem world and reestablishing the Caliphate. Friedman says that in spite of the errors we have made in the war, Al Qaeda has still failed to meet any of these objectives.
According to Friedman, in the Clinton administration foreign policy was more about doing good things to help deserving people, than about pursuing America's national interests. As the worlds only superpower, war was now optional, to be pursued or declined at our option, since no enemy had the power, it was assumed, to force us into war. The attack on 9/11 showed otherwise. Although the earlier attacks; in 1993 on the World Trade Center, and on the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole in Yemen were mostly declined by the Clinton Administration, the audience for the attacks was not the US, but the Moslem world. By failing to respond the US showed weakness and impotence while highlighting Al Qaeda's effectiveness. These attacks vanquished the hopelessness and powerless feeling in the `Arab street' and helped to create the current resurgence of aggressive militant Islam. Friedman compares this war to WWII. Although the traditional idea of war with a competing nation-state is diluted by the non-local or pan-Islamic nature of the Al Qaeda Islamo-fascism, it is still a war. The current conflict has many similarities to the ideological wars of national liberation against Marxism-Leninism, but the historical comparison and precedents in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 are, to him, obvious. The legalistic interpretation that war is simply crime, and the perpetrators of war, criminals is, to Friedman at least with historical perspective, nonsense. He posits that this view would have led FDR on December 7, 1941, to declare that we would hunt down the Japanese pilots who participated in the attack and subject them to judicial proceedings to determine their proportionate guilt and subsequent punishment. This is, as he maintains, absurd. It was, however, the position supported by the Clinton administration in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the current view of Harold Koh, dean of the Yale Law School among others. This view helped to justify the separation between the US Justice Department and the US intelligence gathering organizations In the US, the FBI is a police organization entrusted with the prosecution of crime. Intelligence organizations are involved in the collection of information in anticipation of and to prevent future action. According to Friedman, these functions are not compatible and many of our intelligence failures are the result of this misalignment of resources.
In Friedman's opinion, the only response for a nation who has received a surprise attack is to quickly go on the offensive. Political considerations are, at that time, more important than military ones and more modest goals are to be eschewed in favor of more robust ones even if less than ideal conditions are present for this action. This view resulted in the attack on Afghanistan that caught Al Qaeda and the Taliban by surprise since they didn't think we could respond quickly with more than limited air attacks. This show of force was also necessary to gain the allegiance or at least the attention of the various Afghan warlords whom we had largely abandoned after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and who had now made accommodation with or had direct ties to the Taliban. Although the Afghan campaign worked well and has resulted in the installation of Hamid Karzai as Afghan President, who is now a US ally rather than a Pakistani surrogate, it has not been so great a defeat for Al Qaeda that they lost standing or credibility in the Islamic world. To do this, and to further erase our image of weakness, we needed a greater show of force and determination. This had to be the invasion of Iraq.
The need for invasion was not unrelated to nuclear proliferation. We were worried about the control of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program as well as those in Iran and Iraq. While the State Department favored supporting centralized state control in Pakistan and Iran, they were opposed by the Defense Department which said that nuclear weapons or facilities in control of governments in whom we had no confidence was an intolerable situation. Defense said that 9/11 had created a situation where compromise was unacceptable and a military response was necessary. State was focused on the limits of our capability, Defense was focused on the threat, Defense won.
Friedman says our putative allies were torn. They understood that the US had to wage war on Al Qaeda and they were willing to help us track down Al Qaeda operatives. They were not willing, however, to help us invade Iraq and thereby (at least in their minds) shift the global balance of power. They opposed the Iraq invasion for the same reason we wanted it: it would make the US the preeminent power in the Middle East. That, combined with our control of the seas, would give us a global empire that was not in the interests of the so-called `Great Powers'. These nations feared that with Saudi Arabia and Iran surrounded, America would have more influence on oil production denying Russia the oil pricing advantage she currently enjoyed. France had been pursuing an essentially anti-American foreign policy since WWII seeing America as a threat to her national interests and her attempts to dominate Europe through her collaboration with a psychologically subordinate and submissive Germany. Friedman says that France thought 2003 was the perfect time to create a unified European foreign policy under guidance from Paris and Berlin with the help of Moscow. What they underestimated was the historical collective memory of Eastern Europe who remembered past treatment by Moscow, Paris, and Berlin and welcomed Rumsfeld's categorization of `New Europe'. The result was an increased influence in Europe for the US and embarrassment for France that some may call a victory for the Bush Administration.
Friedman ends the book with a scorecard of gains and failures. He regards the lack of understanding of how completely Iran had built political and administrative control in the Shiite community and through the efforts of Ahmed Chalibi as major failures, as well as the underestimation of the depth and quality of planning in Saddam's guerrilla war. On the success side, he says there has been no `toppling of regimes', no rising of the `Arab street', and virtually all Islamic regimes have increased their support for anti-Al Qaeda activity and are using their own intelligence services to achieve US anti-terrorist goals. The war has also succeeded in the Machiavellian objective of making the US hated and feared in the Arab world instead of hated and held in contempt, which Friedman calls a positive. In summation he says that the American people understand and can endure war, it is the American elite that project their own timidity and self-doubts onto the national character. He says that this is indeed a war, and probably a war `to the finish'. Friedman's book adds some specific new information along with focus and clarity to the continuing debate. It also reads easily and with Steven Coll's "Ghost Wars" provides a continuous detailed history of the latest chapter in the conduct of the `Great Game'. .
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153 of 172 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tremendously good book, October 5, 2004
I just finished reading this book when I saw the author on CNN this morning. Synchronicity. He was what I had expected: sharp, smart, to the point, and not self-evidently in the thrall of a particular political bias.
In fact, this is what drew me to the book. In the introduction he makes a point of saying, "This is not a passionate book. Passion is overrated." Instead, his book is a coldly (and very provocatively) analytical look at the strategic chess match between the U.S. and Al Qaeda since 9-11. There were quite a few things I hadn't seen reported before about the Afghan War (B-52's as sky writers -- who knew?). He sees the Iraq war as a strategic flanking move aimed at influencing Saudi Arabia. Deep strategic thinking underlies the U.S. strategy there, but of course it's too complex and ruthless to explain or sell to the American people, so we got WMD. But it makes good cold sense, and Friedman describes and analyzes this new angle quite convincingly.
He's a clean writer and an insightful thinker with access to a great deal of evidently fresh information. I like his lack of passion. The executives at MSNBC should take one of their screaming blowhards -- Joe Scarborough or Chris Matthews, take your pick -- and replace them with a real-deal analyst like Friedman. A voice of reason in an unreasoning time.
I had never heard of George Friedman before grabbing his book off the shelf and striking gold. This book is full of smart analysis delivered straight. And it may just make you optimistic about the long-term prospects for the war against Islamo-fascism.
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56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
George Friedman's perspective of America's secret War, October 29, 2004
The fundamental premise of George Friedman's recent insightful book America's Secret War: Inside The Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America And Its Enemies is that the events of 9/11, the Afghanistan war and the Iraq War, are all inter-related and form a coherent pattern. Furthermore, as Friedman argues, the principal actors such as Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others are quite aware of what they are doing and are not, as the media would want us sometimes to believe, irrational human beings. We may not agree with their repugnant behavior at times, however, this does not translate into their being stupid, dumb or fools.
Friedman is the founder of a global intelligence company, Stratfor that has provided considerable analytical consultations to Fortune 500 companies, as well as the US Government. He is in the business of analyzing information that his staff and contacts have gathered pertaining to strategic intelligence on global business, economic security and geopolitical affairs.
As mentioned on its website, Stratfor delivers actionable intelligence rather than reactive information prevalent in much of the media today.
It is with this in mind, that Friedman approaches his subject matter in order to provide a synthesis and make sense of what we have experienced these past few years and what lies ahead.
From the very onset of the book, the author hammers home the point that we are engaged in a Global War, although it may not look like any of the previous wars.
As the author quotes the renowned theorist of war, Karl von Clausewitz "War is politics carried out by other means." In other words, in order to make sense of wars you have to know something about the politics.
Among the highlights of the book is Friedman's take on the Afghanistan War and the events leading up to the war. No doubt, according to Friedman, one of the principal reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was the war's length and brutality sapping its Army of its strength and credibility.
However, what is more important, as Friedman states, is that it was here where "the base"- or "Al Qaeda" in Arabic, established their movement.
Friedman informs us that one of the principal outcomes of the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan was the creation of experienced Islamist soldiers, many trained by American Special Force personnel, who were armed with captured Soviet weapons as well as American weapons. Drawing upon this inventory of soldiers and armament, bin Laden succeeded in putting together his fighting forces, which were quite eager to join the eventual Jihad against the United States and other non-Muslim countries. To add a little fuel to the fire, it should be pointed out, as Friedman does, that many of these operatives were left stranded after the war and found themselves in the unenviable situation of not being welcomed backed to wherever they may have originated.
Moreover, according to Friedman, and no doubt in hind sight, the decision by the first Bush administration to pull the plug on Afghanistan and give it low priority, was a huge mistake, particularly when you consider the eventual coming into power of the Taliban. Friedman also argues that one of the core defects of American strategy in the 1990s is that it did not fully comprehend that there is no such thing as a neutral intervention. No matter how you intervene, it will ultimately favor one group over another.
The author further informs us that with personnel and armament in place, Al Qaeda was able to pursue its objectives in its war against the USA and here again is where there was a monumental screw up on the part of the Americans. The blowing up of embassies and warships were all politically motivated. However, the American political leadership called upon terrorism experts, who focused on the operational and tactical techniques and completely ignored the significance of Al Qaeda and its political objectives.
Friedman points outs that Clinton's half-hearted measures after these bombings, particularly the USS Cole incident, was another huge error, particularly when he and his administration thought of Al Qaeda as another terrorist gang.
Friedman deals at length with the shortcomings of the American intelligence community and their lack of effectively analyzing data in relation to 9/11.
The author states that it was not the lack of spies or the lack of sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems, that was at fault, but rather the profound lack of language skills and trained sophisticated personnel to figure out what was being said. The information existed; however, no one seemed to know what to do with it.
Another shortcoming, according to the author, of the American intelligence was its failure to believe that a non-state organization could pose a threat to a major state.
As for Iraq, the author points out seven enormous errors on the part of American foreign policy: the failure to comprehend that Ahmed Chalabi was actually an Iranian agent: relying on Chalabi's misleading evidence pertaining to Iraq's WMDs: not being aware of how well organized the Shiites in Iraq had been-thanks to the Iranians: the failure to understand that Saddam Hussein had a war plan following the fall of Baghdad: failing to understand that the war in Iraq would not end with the fall of Baghdad: not admitting for several months after the war that there was an organized resistance in Iraq: not having sufficient troops the U.S. Army could deploy. As mentioned, "for the first time in American history, the United States attempted to fight a global war with a force no larger than the peacetime cadre it began with."
If you are wondering about the words in the title of the book, America's Secret War, the preface to the book, which should probably be re-read after you complete the last chapter, just about sums it up. The secret lies in our lack of understanding of the intentions and behavior of all of the actors involved, the inevitable errors in judgment and the unintended consequences that have created the pattern for the past three years.
America's Secret War provides us with excellent insight devoid of ridiculous presumptions and theories that are all too often contained in many of the thousands of books that have been published to date on the same subject matter, and it should be required reading for anyone who wishes to know more about what is going on today and its possible future ramifications.
(...)
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