In the third week of October 2001, the operation to terminate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was getting underway. United States air-strikes were attacking Taliban military forces, and the CIA and other agencies were beginning the urgent task of re-equipping and rearming the Northern Alliance warlords so that they could push the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan. The George W Bush administration was confident that its key objectives were within reach: the Taliban regime would be defeated; its leader Mullah Omar and the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden would be killed or detained; and the al-Qaida movement would be dispersed and weakened, if not destroyed.

The post-9/11 tide of sweeping ambition was at its height. Already the neo-conservatives in Washington were escalating their demand that Iraq be made the next target; it was widely believed in leading US political circles that the Saddam Hussein regime could be terminated with ease and Iraq transformed into a free-market client state (see "From Afghanistan to Iraq?", 15 October 2001). This would, the calculation went, in turn severely constrain the real enemy in the region - Iran - and could in addition set in motion regime-change in antagonistic Syria. More generally, American international leadership and influence would be restored after the atrocities and shock of 9/11, and the great idea of a "new American century" would be back on track.

The dream unravels

Exactly six years later, just about every aspect of this project - what was just beginning to be called the "war on terror" - is in disarray; not one of these aims has been achieved.

Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001The Oxford Research Group's new international-security report, Towards Sustainable Security: Alternatives to the War on Terror (October 2007) maps the realities behind the rhetoric. It points out that there are now approximately 50,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, yet a concerted Taliban comeback in the south and east contributes to a dire security situation. Across the border in Pakistan, frontier districts such as North Waziristan and South Waziristan are almost entirely outside of the control of the Pakistani army, and thus essentially free-zones for Taliban and al-Qaida militias to operate.

In Iraq, the United States and its dwindling band of coalition partners are mired in an immensely damaging conflict. The enormous human cost of four and a half years of war includes those mired in successive scandals deriving from US policy: from Abu Ghraib to rendition, from Haditha to Blackwater. The war continues to hammer the reputation of the United States across the region and beyond. Moreover, it has contributed to the al-Qaida movement's ability to adapt and establish itself as a potent force; in this sense, its dispersal after the initial fall of the Taliban helped its transformation into a near-virtual movement with innumerable associates that are almost impossible to identify and track (see Pablo Policzer & Ram Manikkalingam, "Al-Qaida: from centre to periphery", 9 October 2007)

In the face of these outcomes, many sober analysts now call for a rethinking of US policy in (at least) Afghanistan. The Oxford Research Group itself is among those arguing for a more general move towards the idea of sustainable security: that is, an approach less concerned with maintaining the western status quo through the use of force and more about undercutting extreme movements by focusing on their underlying support-base (see Chris Abbott, "Beyond terrorism: towards sustainable security", 17 April 2007).

The military rethinks

In such circumstances, it is worth paying particular attention to the views of the United States military, not least to question whether its recent experiences might be leading towards an exploration of more radical alternatives to its current "control" paradigm.

An indication of the current thinking of the US army is provided by two inside sources: the testimony of the US army's chief-of-staff, General George W Casey, in a Senate hearing on 26 September 2007; and the views of a key official in the army's Training and Doctrine Command (Tradoc), Lieutenant-General Michael Vane.

General Casey's appearance before the House of Representatives armed-services committee was notable for his clarity that the United States was moving into a period of continual war that would see it engage most commonly with irregular forces. In his words:

"Adversaries will employ propaganda, threat, intimidation and overt violence to coerce people and gain control of their land or resources. Some will avoid our proven advantages by adopting asymmetric techniques utilizing direct approaches and immersing themselves in the population. Many of the conflicts will be protracted" (see Kris Osborn, "U.S. Army Sees 15 More Years of War", Defense News, 1 October 2007 [subscription only]).

Casey was speaking from the point of view of the army as a whole, but an even more interesting expression of its thinking is represented in one of its specialist, strategic institutions. Tradoc is at the heart of how the US army fights wars. It has been hugely exercised by the problems experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has expended considerable effort into developing new counterinsurgency tactics and weapons - often in close collaboration with the Israelis (see "Between Fallujah and Palestine", 22 April 2004).

Beyond this more immediate, reactive stance, however, Tradoc is committed to a larger worldview that envisages lengthy periods of conflict which will render Afghanistan and Iraq only early instances of the "long war" that is evolving. Michael Vane, director of Tradoc's army capabilities integration centre, expresses it thus:

"We see protracted conflicts by state and nonstate actors that are fuelled be expanding Islamic extremism, competition for energy, this whole business of globalization, the climate and demographic changes that you see occurring, and the increasing use of violence to achieve political and ideological outcomes by these state and nonstate actors".

Michael Vane and similar service leaders anticipate ten-to-fifteen more years of war against a range of enemies. These conflicts will be fought very much along the lines of the current battles the US is involved in, but the variousness of the challenge the US faces means it will need to develop many different ways of maintaining control (see "U.S. Army Seeks More Funds for FCS Spinouts", Defense News, 15 October 2007).

This attitude is light-years away from the quaint ideas of then US secretary of defence: a world in which hi-tech and supremely agile US forces with numerous precision-guided weapons could simply "take out" terrorists and rogue states opposed to America's civilising role.

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

Paul Rogers's latest book is Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control (Routledge, July 2007). This is a collection of papers and essays written over the last twenty years, with two new essays on the current global predicamentIn the Rumsfeld version, there would be little need for "boots on the ground" and small risk of American casualties. General Casey's view of protracted conflict entails very different consequences; in the words of a Defense News journalist: "...more soldiers battling small groups of riflemen in close-quarter urban environments, driving over roadside bombs and dodging grenades while searching for groups of enemy fighters blending into a local population."

An associate of Lieutenant-General Vane underlines what this means for the US army: "You have to sustain, prepare, reset and transform if we are going to be in this persistent conflict. There is no pause. All the stuff that got worn out will have to be built back up quickly. There will not be a peacetime dividend."

The worldview rigidifies

What is particularly significant in all this is the manner in which the United States military establishment sees the diverse contests around the world which it confidently expects to be engaged in as security problems it must control. Even big social or environmental processes are made part of this worldview: climate change, the impacts of globalisation (such as mass migration), and radical political movements are all seen as raw material for a control-led security paradigm.

In one sense, the US military (and the many defence think-tanks that share its mindset or reach the same conclusions) are ahead of many politicians in recognising the potential security implications of global shifts such as climate change (see "Climate change and global security" [2 January 2003], "The challenge of global climate change" [12 August 2003], and "Climate change: threat and promise" [2 November 2006]). But such recognition is also in tension with their institutional allegiances, for their professional responsibility is the protection of states and alliances rather than working to prevent or contain dangerous crises.

It is in this respect that the Nobel committee in Norway is right to have awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2007 jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the maker of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore. Both the IPCC and Gore are attempting - the first by detailed scientific understanding of causes and trends, the second by assiduous high-profile public campaigning - to counter the probable catastrophic effects of man-made climate change.

The reason why this particular prize is appropriate is that the IPCC and Al Gore's work on the most serious and multidimensional problem facing humanity is, in essence, a contribution to conflict-prevention. If they and many others succeed, then the prospects for preventing the worst security impacts of climate change could improve greatly.

Always in the background and with far more institutional and political weight, however, is the perspective now clearly prominent in the United States military establishment. As the world becomes even more fractured and uncertain, the need to control overrides any focus on the issues underpinning and generating insecurity and disorder. Even the first, disastrous, six years of the war on terror seem to have done little to dent this rigid yet classic example of "old thinking". The time for it to change has not yet arrived.