Radical Islam may threaten Muslim world, but not West - overreaction to Islamic fundamentalism mirrors panic about post-World War II communist threats - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 21, 1994 | by Alvin Z. Rubinstein

For 50 years, America was at war. From 1941 to 1991, it committed troops and resources to safeguard vital interests and defend allies and friends from aggression by expansionist tyrants. Now, as we look ahead, there is a need to learn from the past, to avoid the miscalculations that proved so costly and tragic during the Cold War.

Containment is a good example. It clearly was intended to deter Soviet expansion in Europe and East Asia. But starting with John F. Kennedy, successive presidents broadened its protective arc, introducing a military activism that led us into a quagmire in Vietnam. The result was a disproportionate U.S. commitment to a politically and militarily marginal client. There was no Soviet (or Chinese) expansion, no aggression by the Soviet Union across an internationally recognized border, not even a major Soviet or Chinese military presence that might have indicated the Kremlin was seeking to extend the range of its power-projection capability. By failing to distinguish between Soviet deeds and Soviet declarations, the United States overreacted to what Moscow said and exaggerated what it was accomplishing. And it confused the threat of Soviet military power with the ideological-cultural challenge of communism.

The mistake that Washington made with communism is being repeated in its assessment of Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamist problem is being globalized, its capability to threaten the West and Western interests inflated and its diverse, contradictory nature oversimplified.

Islamic fundamentalists threaten Muslim, not Western, regimes. Despite their terrorist outrages, such as the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, the murder of tourists in Egypt and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon, they do not possess the military or economic-industrial strength to threaten the security of the United States or any major non-Muslim country. Neither Iran nor Sudan nor any other anti-Western Muslim country could, singly or in concert, constitute such a threat.

Rather, it is the Islamic societies groping for ways to reconcile Islam to the modern world that are at risk: Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, for example. American military power is not a suitable instrument to help them navigate the shoals of secularism and stagnation. Nor can it protect corrupt elites unable or unwilling to fight poverty, illiteracy and disease.

Islamic fundamentalism is no more a monolithic, purposefully orchestrated threat to the West than was communism during the Cold War. Saudi Arabia and Iran are fundamentalist regimes, yet the Saudis are friends, not enemies. To confuse matters even more, it was Saddam Hussein's secularist, modernized Iraq -- not clericalist, Islamist, "revolutionary" Iran -- that twice in a decade mounted aggressions that threatened to upset the West's position in the Persian Gulf. And when militant religious leaders are on the run, they flee to the West, not to Muslim countries: Ayatonah Ruhollah Khomeini organized the downfall of the shah from France; Sheik Obeid entered the United States illegally in order to push his terrorist campaign to overthrow Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Islamic fundamentalism, like communism, may offer its followers an all-embracing belief system, a world outlook and a readily identifiable enemy, but it lacks a central authority with the undisputed legitimacy to speak and shape policy for all the diverse movements identifying themselves as Muslim fundamentalist. Although capable of terrorism, its adherents cannot wage war or conquer new lands. They may not even be able to improve the societies they subvert to put themselves in power.

Effective Western reactions to Islamic fundamentalism lie more in the realm of meaningful cooperation with beleaguered Muslim governments, expanded intelligence operations and support for development projects rather than in arms or force projection. The problem is long-term. Differentiation, not demonization, is the key to a successful strategy of containment.

Alvin Z. Rubinstein is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia and a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.