My earlier correspondent, Steve Cohen (not the BRIE Steve Cohen or the Russion historian) got in touch with me and permitted me to give him attribution. Here is the second of three replies:
For it’s no secret that the hawkish position must almost inevitably lead, if not to genocide, to a situation where no Arab nation is allowed to exist as a sovereign entity. Expelling the Palestinians from Israel cannot be accomplished without destroying any force determined to resist it. Iraq and Iran will both have to go, along with Syria and probably Jordan too, as independent entities, followed by the Saudis too. The wealth that comes from oil will not be permitted to stay in Arab hands.
I’ll take this as a question in the form of a statement.
There are two real issues here. One of them is about intentions and root causes, and goes to two very broad worldwide trends – the rise of the romantic, as opposed to bourgeois, worldview in the West and elsewhere – and the rise of what Joe Katzman is talking about in 4th Generation Warfare. The other is about tactics and specific mechanisms.
On the front of intentions and causes, the core issue is that the Arab cultures have brewed a combination of anti-Western and anti-bourgeois values that will make it very difficult for us to have a dialog with them – forget that, that are making it very difficult to have a dialog with them, as we from our specific cultural and historic perspective understand a diplomatic dialog. Because the issues under debate are not only the kind of rational, objective discussion over actions and commitments to action that we expect when we negotiate, they have to do with understandings, perceptions, and worldviews.
This fits neatly into the 4GW (4th Generation Warfare – see Winds of Change) model of “diffuse warfare”, in which states may only indirectly be the actors in wars, and in which the power of the state itself is limited by extra-state actors.
One of the problems is that everyone has fallen into orbit around the question of the Palestinian State. So here is the $64 question:
If the Palestinians had a state, could they maintain a monopoly on inter-state violence?
I don’t think so, not today. The fundamental characteristic of a state is its ability to exercise a monopoly in interstate violence. If a bunch of American militia types decided that they wanted Baja California, and started mounting cross-border raids into San Felipe, it would be expected that the US would use it’s military and police forces to find and stop them. And we certainly would (although there were periods in our past – a hundred or more years ago – when that was not the case).
Tactically, the question is what actions by us will permit the moderate voices in the Arab world to be heard? By moderate, I do not mean pro-Western, non-Islamic, or even pro-Israel. I mean simply the voices that do not believe that the interests of the Muslim community will be advanced solely through violence and the threat of violence.
I don’t think that the hawkish position leads inevitably to genocide; I think in combination with some common sense and an amazing restraint on the part of Israel, it leads to the best possibility we have for avoiding genocide. I believe that inaction or acquiescence leads us to a higher liklihood of genocide, as the Islamists remain convinced that our military power is a hollow shell and that we are afraid of them, and that escalating their violent rhetoric and actions will gain them more than political or economic action.
I don’t doubt that the wealth of the Arab states figures into the equation at some level. But I also don’t doubt that if the WTC was still standing, and if the Saudi and Iraqi governments had shipped the dozens of possible suspects living there over to us, that we would not be considering any military action.