After The Guns Are Silent

By Michael Elliott

One does not normally expect a Republican American President to confirm the wisdom of a Chinese communist, but if ever proof were needed of Mao Zedong's maxim that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," the war in Afghanistan waged by George W. Bush's Administration has just supplied it. To the shock, it might be added, of those Americans who, but the day before yesterday, still did not appreciate how awe-inspiring their country's military had become. At the end of October, as the forces of the Northern Alliance seemed to shirk a fight and the residents of Kabul left town each night for the Taliban's front lines (where they knew they would not be bombed), the usual code words were to be found all over the media: quagmire, stalemate and, of course, Vietnam. Within two weeks, the Taliban had been routed from the cities of Afghanistan's north and turfed out of Kabul. Three weeks later, the Taliban deserted its stronghold in Kandahar, while its leaders, together with the fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, were in flight, exile or caves.

This stunning victory was won by a military machine that, while not the largest the world has ever seen, is man for man the most powerful. There is no single factor that sets the U.S. armed forces apart from others, says Terence Taylor, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. There is rather "a full range of technical military capabilities, from ICBMs to 'feet on the ground,'" in which American power is unparalleled. From aircraft carriers (the U.S. has more than all other NATO members combined) to Tomahawk cruise missiles (so good that Washington allows their export only to Britain), the American military is better equipped and more technologically advanced than any other. To an extent, all that was true after the Gulf War 10 years ago. But the gap between American military capability and that of the rest of the world was obscured back then because the American economy was considered ailing, while the German and Japanese ones (remember?) were the bee's knees. In any event, since then, European defense budgets have stagnated, and the once mighty armed forces of the Soviet Union have rusted away, so the weight of American military might is greater than ever.

Guns are useful things; as Mao understood, if you want to impose your will on adversaries, you can't have enough of them. It was American guns and precision-guided bombs, not criminal indictments, that drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of power in Afghanistan. It will be guns and bombs--either used or credibly threatened--not United Nations resolutions, that will end Iraq's efforts to make weapons of mass destruction. But as Mao's successors eventually realized, guns can't do everything. Even in the war against terrorism, the mailed fist can be no more than a necessary condition for victory; it is not sufficient. From the very start of the war, Bush and his Cabinet members--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as much as Secretary of State Colin Powell--have stressed that it had to be fought on many fronts. There is a military dimension to the conflict, of course, but also ones that are legal, economic, financial, cultural, educational. In those areas, soldiers and pilots can do only so much. We're going to invade Abu Dhabi because it doesn't crack down on those of its banks that terrorists use for money laundering? Don't think so. Even pure acts of terrorism don't always lend themselves to a military response. The attack by Islamic suicide terrorists on the Indian Parliament in December has put the relationship between India and Pakistan--both nuclear powers--on a hair trigger. Yet the Indo-Pakistan conflict is not, at root, about terrorism at all; it is about competing national visions and claims to territory in the wake of a botched decolonization half a century ago. If the U.S. is to play a role in defusing tensions (not that anyone has asked it to), it will have to do so by deploying traditional diplomats, not the brave boys and girls of Centcom.

In purely military adventures, the U.S. can pretty much do it all. Sure, it's nice for the Pentagon to have British special forces at its disposal, because the British have perfected long-term deep penetration into enemy territory by small groups of men. But nobody thinks that's more than a small trump in a hand stuffed with them. Once the game moves away from military action, however, the U.S. really does need allies. Washington can't arrest terrorists in Italy on its own or reform Saudi Arabia's education system on its own. Powerful though it is, the U.S. needs help. And in other pressing international matters, the limits of American military power come into even sharper focus. The week before Christmas, the Argentine government collapsed, as a long-running economic crisis spilled on to the streets. In two days of rioting, more than 20 people died. Now, as a matter of cool logic, it is easy to demonstrate that nobody in Washington need lose a minute's sleep over the land of tango. Argentina is hardly a stranger to economic queer streets; its economy is only the size of Ohio's. Besides (so we are told), Wall Street has long since "discounted" the prospect of a default on Argentina's sovereign debt, so there's no need to worry. On the other hand, in 1997 the collapse of the Thai baht (Thailand's economy is about as big as Tennessee's) sparked a financial crisis throughout Asia that, without decisive policy interventions from Washington, would have threatened the global economy and led to the loss of many American jobs. It wasn't B-52s that did the trick then, and if we are to head off a crisis of confidence throughout Latin America--one that could eventually spread to Mexico, which exports its economic woes to the U.S. in the form of migrants--it won't be daisy cutters that do it now.

It is those two truths--the need for allies and the limits to military power--that define the challenge facing George Bush. In its first six months, his Administration sometimes appeared to think it could do without the rest of the world. Sure, the Bush Administration was never as unilateralist as its critics alleged. If it had been, it would not have spent so much time finding a new relationship with Russia. Moreover, some of the matters on which Bush and his team did not share the views of allies--like the Kyoto accord on global warming--are, to put it mildly, ones on which reasonable people may differ. But this much is true: though the Bush Administration was happy to say what treaties and other aspects of international cooperation it opposed, it rarely articulated what it was for.

So here's a project in which Bush can lead the world: the eradication of poverty. According to the World Bank, some 1.2 billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day. Why should we care? Some will want to alleviate the lot of the poorest out of charity, shame or--what the hell--seasonal goodwill. Good for them. The more hardhearted among us have other reasons. Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, calls poverty on the present scale "an unmanageable problem in a single global economy." Poverty, Malloch Brown argues, provides the breeding ground for international pathologies: support for terrorism, narcotrafficking, massive migration flows, the spread of infectious diseases. (To anticipate the silliest objection to this line of reasoning: yes, bin Laden is rich. But those who hero-worship him are not.) Poverty and its discontents have a habit of slipping out of their natural habitat.

We know what we should do. Poor countries need access to world markets for their goods; in a new report on globalization and poverty, the World Bank reckons that trade protection in rich countries costs the poor world $100 billion each year. They need peace, after which stable governments can secure foreign capital. They need help in building fair legal systems. They need investment in health and education, especially for women and girls.

Is there any reason to think Bush will rise to this challenge? Here's why he might. Twice in modern times, the power of its arms allowed the U.S. to reshape the world. In 1945 Harry Truman and his wise men crafted an international architecture that re-established confidence and renewed democracy. In 1991, after the Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush, apart from prattling about a "new world order," didn't seem to have a clue about what to do with his new global authority. Truman won the ensuing presidential election; Bush Sr. did not. Put it another way: Mao had a vision for the political power that his guns had bestowed on him. Does President Bush?