Military Officer - October 2006 - (Page 56) meeting these challenges. Next, it had to assess whether the strategy it proposes will be adequately resourced. And finally, the force structure and defense program proposed by DoD had to be consistent with the diagnosis of the threat and the strategy proposed for addressing it. How well did the QDR identify the major existing and emerging challenges to America’s security? The report gets high marks here. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has concluded that no current or prospective enemy is foolhardy enough to take on the U.S. military directly — tank against tank, fighter jet against fighter jet. Rather, he argues, the threat is assuming different forms. Radical Muslims employ terror and subversion and seek weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to cause widespread damage. Hostile and potentially unstable countries, such as North Korea and Iran, develop nuclear arsenals to intimidate American allies and threaten our military’s ability to protect vital national interests. Although China is not an enemy, it is developing a set of military assets it calls the “assassin’s mace,” emphasizing ballistic missiles, information warfare, antisatellite weaponry, submarines, and high-speed cruise missiles — capabilities clearly designed to threaten U.S. access to the “global commons” of space, the infosphere, and the oceans and intimidate America’s allies and friends in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. T Challenge No. 1: Radical Muslims oday the U.S. does not wage a war against terrorism. Terrorism is a form of warfare, not an actual enemy. Rather, the U.S. is at war with radical Islam. Thus DoD’s adoption of the term “long war” represents an improvement over “global war on terrorism.” Radical Muslims are employing terrorism as it is the only form of warfare available to them at the moment, just as an insurgent movement employs terrorism as its principal means of war while it seeks to gain strength for more ambitious forms of military operations. Radical Muslims constitute a transnational, theologically based insurgent movement seeking to overthrow regimes in the Muslim world that are friendly toward the U.S. and to evict America’s presence from parts of the world viewed as vital to U.S. interests. Aside from its transnational character and theological roots, this insurgency differs from most in that its leaders seek to employ advanced technology — in the form of telecommunications for coordination and WMDs — to cause maximum destruction. The radical Muslims’ lack of respect for the laws of war and the lives of innocents, combined with their apparent willingness to employ weapons of mass destrucMILITARY OFFICER OCTOBER 2006 As with most insurgencies, victory rests less in military action than in the successful treatment of political, economic, and social ills and in winning the war of ideas. tion and disruption (should they acquire them), makes this insurgency especially threatening. Radical Muslims have exploited elements of globalization — financial networks, the Internet, and increasingly porous borders — to form a network with global reach. Moreover, insurgencies and wars of religion tend to be protracted affairs and, particularly in religious wars, often bloody. The roots of this insurgency run deep. No one should think that this war will be won quickly or that the price of victory will be cheap. As with most insurgencies, victory rests less in military action than in the successful treatment of political, economic, and social ills and in winning the war of ideas against those advancing a perverse, dangerous distortion of Islam. Victory will take years, perhaps decades. In the 56
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