A wartime window of opportunity: the regimes in Iraq and Iran are ripe for change, and defense experts say the strategy known as the Bush Doctrine must take full advantage before it's too late

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 4, 2002 | by J. Michael Waller

In other words, it might be possible for the United States to oust the terrorist regimes of Iraq and Iran at the same time -- militarily against Saddam and peacefully against the mullahs of Iran. And, according to this reasoning, the biological-, chemical- and nuclear-weapons programs of these regimes could be destroyed as well. Just as the Reagan Doctrine rolled back communism, liberated millions of people from totalitarianism and dismembered much of the Soviet military threat, the Bush Doctrine for rolling back terrorist regimes could serve to liberate millions more while destroying a growing new threat to America's security.

Just as much of the foreign-policy establishment opposed Reagan's idea that communism should be fought instead of accommodated, opposition against confronting Iran and Iraq remains. "There are still a few people at State who are thinking in terms of engagement," Ra'anan notes.

Meanwhile, homeland security already is part of the Bush Doctrine. Maintaining and expanding U.S. antiterrorism capabilities, and meeting the still-unknown demands of defending the American people and their way of life, means beefing up U.S. military and intelligence capabilities in an entirely different part of the world: space. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team believe that unimpeded U.S. access to space, and the ability to deny such access to any other power, are key to maintaining U.S. national security.

With the new information-based society, the United States depends on an intricate and fragile web of telecommunications networks: Telephones, cell phones, fax and Internet, news and entertainment, commerce and trade, banking and financial markets and just about everything else that requires the transmission of information also requires the use of satellites and space. So do the means of national defense. Cyberterrorists and hackers on the ground; unfriendly security services from Cuba, the Middle East, Russia, China and elsewhere; and potential rivals in space are a huge threat of which the Bush national-security team is well aware.

In a major policy statement on Sept. 30, 2001, largely unnoticed amid news of the terrorist attacks and the U.S. response, Rumsfeld issued a long-awaited Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), designed to shape the future of the U.S. defense community. "It is not enough to plan for conventional wars in distant theaters," Rumsfeld wrote in the introduction. "Instead, the United States must identify the capabilities required to deter and defeat adversaries who will rely on surprise, deception and asymmetric warfare to achieve their objectives." If the antiterrorism effort's mission would determine the coalition, the QDR's capability requirements will determine the future defense budget.

But in spite of the awesome U.S. military might, the QDR sees weaker powers as capable of disabling U.S. access to space: "During crisis or conflict, potential adversaries may target U.S., allied and commercial space assets as an asymmetric means of containing or reducing U.S. military operational effectiveness, intelligence capabilities, economic and social stability, and national will."