A full account of the tragic events in the village of Kakarak in the Oruzgan region of Afghanistan has yet to emerge, but it is clear that many people were killed in a US air attack that hit a wedding party. Early confusion may never be entirely resolved, but what is apparent is that the initial statement from the Pentagon gave only a small indication of the full extent of the military operations being undertaken at the time.
At first, it was stated that a coalition reconnaissance aircraft had come under anti-aircraft artillery fire, and that it was a counter-attack by a close air-support aircraft that had resulted in the deaths and injuries. There were, however, subsequent indications that an extensive military operation was underway in the area of the attack, and that this involved US ground troops as well as B-52 and AC-130 aircraft.
Other reports that were published prior to the wedding party attack spoke of a substantial arms find, possibly separate from this operation, involving eight tons of ordnance including missiles. In addition, there was a report some twenty-four hours earlier that a US location in Afghanistan, probably the base near Kandahar, had been subject to an attack involving rocket-propelled grenades. No casualties were reported.
From the very limited evidence available so far, it seems that a substantial military operation was underway that involved air and ground forces and that it may have met resistance, at least in the form of anti-aircraft fire. Apart from the tragedy for the many people attending the wedding, this does indicate that there is organised resistance to coalition forces, and that this is supported by weapons and munitions still available within Afghanistan.
Once again, the assumption that the war in Afghanistan is over is clearly misplaced, but this has, in any case, been more of a political and media construct. The US military has tended to describe the operations in Afghanistan as mopping up, pending the establishment of an effective national Afghan army. However, this is proving more difficult than had been expected. Moreover, there have been firm, if generally unreported, statements that the US armed forces would remain in Afghanistan for at least a year.
Prisoners and war crimes
Beyond the problems in Afghanistan, the wider implications of US security policy post-9/11 are now beginning to emerge, although they will not be made clear until the publication of the National Security Strategy, expected in the early autumn. There have been two early indications of the rigorous commitment to an independent security policy: the controversy over the UN International Criminal Court, which came into being in The Hague this week; and the issue of the treatment of the prisoners held at Guantanamo in Cuba and elsewhere.
In the case of the prisoners, the US Justice Department has argued that a prisoner who is declared an enemy combatant does not have the right to a lawyer, and that it is not appropriate for US lawyers to argue with the classification of such prisoners by the military. The authority to hold such prisoners in US security interests comes from the President, and there appears to be no right of appeal and no limit on the time for which such prisoners can be held in custody.
Justification for this goes back, in part, to the Second World War and such incidents as the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans. It appears to have been extended to include the three US citizens currently being held. It is an argument that has aroused considerable controversy among legal academics, many of whom are concerned with an apparent infringement of liberties that is being extended to US citizens. It is notable, though, that there is a wide variation of opinion, with other legal specialists supporting the Justice Department as part of the necessary war on terror.
The issue of the International Criminal Court is, in one sense, relatively minor, but has considerable implications. The US administration has been consistently antagonistic to the court, an opposition that was strong in Republican circles prior to the 1990 election. The objections are therefore not new, but its current concern is with the possibility of peacekeeping forces being subject to indictment for political motives.
This attitude is substantially different from that of European states, but it is worth remembering that the kind of immunity sought by the US is in line with long-standing assurances given to US forces stationed overseas. One example is the Visiting Forces legislation that has applied to US forces in the UK since the cold war era.
At the heart of this attitude is a belief that the US systematically acts in a civilised manner that is consonant with Western security interests and that it is categorically wrong for its forces to be faced with mischievous actions by those working to other agendas. In its own way, it is as much a reflection of current security thinking as the decision to move more broadly to a posture that embraces pre-emption in the face of new threats.
The pre-history of pre-emptive military action
The changes in the National Security Strategy revolve around the perceived need to act first when the United States is considered to be under threat. It is argued that the cold war posture was essentially one of containing the Soviet Union by constraining its expansionist policies, and deterring any major offensive action by means of conventional and nuclear forces. This was considered to be appropriate in the context of an organised opposing state operating in a global context and subject to deterrence by virtue of its own vulnerabilities. In other words, the Soviet Union was susceptible to deterrence. Critics of this view would argue that deterrence based on weapons of mass destruction was inherently unwise. They point to what is now known about the Cuba Missile Crisis, the 1983 Able Archer incident and other examples as proof that the cold war was not at all stable and that we were lucky to get out of it without a catastrophe.
This, though, is only relevant to todays environment in the sense that it shows the lengths to which military strategy is liable to go, and the risks that are taken, to ensure security.
The posture now being developed is based on the belief that rogue states and sub-state paramilitary groups will simply not be deterred in the manner of the cold war era, and that they must therefore be handled in a much more robust manner, including striking first, even if there is no conclusive evidence of intent to strike the United States or its interests.
Furthermore, such a policy may well extend to pre-empting the use of biological and chemical weapons, even if this involves the use of specialised nuclear weapons such as earth-penetrating warheads.
Is this overall approach new?
It is certainly true that relations with the Soviet Union were, to a large extent, based on mutual deterrence, however risky, but this has not precluded numerous instances of military intervention, some of them involving pre-emption. Panama and Grenada in the 1980s are examples of the latter, and there has been direct or indirect intervention in numerous other countries in Latin America, as well as examples across the Middle East and Asia, not least in Vietnam.
The US change of gear: four sources
Even so, the evolving military posture does represent a much more upfront approach and is being supported by a wide range of military developments across the US armed forces. It also comes at a time when the Bush administration is far less concerned with multilateral agreements, whether these relate to missile defence, nuclear testing, climate change, the weaponisation of space or, indeed, the International Criminal Court.
There have been four substantive elements driving this change, and when they are put together we can get some idea of the sheer momentum of what is happening.
One core element was the development, among the Republican security community in the late 1990s, of a belief that the United States was losing out in its natural post-cold-war world role. Having defeated the Soviet Union, it was now facing myriad lesser threats to its political and economic interests, and it was necessary to be far more forceful in controlling these threats. If the 21st century was truly to be the American Century, then this could only come with vigorous political and economic leadership.
A flagship group, the Project on the New American Century, was supported by a galaxy of Republican talent, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The election of George W. Bush provided the second element the opportunity to put these ideas into practice.
The third element was the likelihood that such a leadership, with its tough security requirements, would provide a substantial new impetus for the militaryindustrial complex. While we would not revisit the sudden and massive re-arming of America of the early Reagan years, the cutbacks of the 1990s certainly looked to be at an end and prospects for many new projects looked brighter than for a decade.
The final element was, of course, the attacks of 11 September, but what has to be remembered is that these attacks came in the context of a new security agenda that was already being developed. It is for this reason that the response to 9/11 has been particularly tough and wide-ranging.
Furthermore, there remains a clear lack of understanding in Europe and most of the world about the fundamental effects of the attacks. It was not just the human cost of the attacks that was so traumatic, although that was catastrophic for a country that had experienced so little domestic vulnerability. It was that the twin towers were remarkable symbols of US international economic influence and their loss went to the heart of the Republican foreign policy agenda.
The United States was shown to be intensely vulnerable just at a time when the prevailing security paradigm was that it was entering a phase of truly global power with no rivals in sight. The response has, therefore, had to be one of an utterly determined policy of regaining and then maintaining control of a deeply volatile international system.
It is this combination of circumstances that is at the heart of the American drive for security, and it is a drive that is likely to result in yet more tension with Europe. It will not go away in the short term and may well survive the 2004 elections, even if they result in a Democrat administration.
