The Cheney Tour: The REAL explanation of what's going on.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's trip to the Middle East is in response to two fears. One is the American fear that al Qaeda will eventually acquire nuclear weapons and destroy American cities. The other is a fear in the Middle East, and indeed globally, that the United States, in the course of defending itself against this threat, will completely overturn the international system and impose upon the world an American empire. Both fears are reasonable.

Sept. 11 was a terrible day for the United States, but it did not threaten the very fabric of American society. Fifty September 11ths would not do that. But were al Qaeda to acquire nuclear, biological or chemical weapons and the ability to use them effectively, then that social fabric could indeed be threatened. In his various taped messages, Osama bin Laden warned of a cataclysm facing the United States. There is no question that bin Laden wants to destroy the United States, and there is no question that he is a capable man with a capable organization. So the threat cannot be dismissed. There appears to be sufficient evidence in the hands of U.S. intelligence about al Qaeda's attempts to secure nuclear weapons to create this situation:

1. The United States knows that al Qaeda wants to destroy it.
2. The obvious means to attain this end is to use nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
3. The U.S. knows that al Qaeda has tried to obtain such weapons.
4. It cannot be ruled out that al Qaeda has already obtained nuclear weapons. While we cannot know for sure that they have them now, it is almost certain that al Qaeda will continue trying to obtain these weapons.
5. If at all possible, they will use them.

If al Qaeda already has these weapons, it is imperative that the United States obliterate al Qaeda as quickly as possible. Ideally, U.S. intelligence would know for certain whether such weapons have been obtained and where they are located. However, the United States must assume that it has, at best, incomplete data. Therefore, even if it knows the current location of al Qaeda weapons, it understands destroying that particular set of weapons would not destroy all of them.

The United States must also assume that if these weapons were in the United States already, they would have been used by now. The threat of compromise and capture of such valuable assets would force al Qaeda to use them as quickly as possible. It follows that if al Qaeda has obtained significant nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, they are located where al Qaeda operatives are working. Most likely they are in the process of being moved into the United States and are in transit at some point in the complex international structure.

The first step in assuring U.S. national security is to disrupt of al Qaeda's ability to move the weapons from country to country. That means that the United States must:

1. Destroy as many parts of the al Qaeda network as possible.
2. Destroy these parts as soon as possible.
3. Strike at these parts as close to simultaneously as possible in order to prevent rapid regeneration.

Although this process may not ultimately destroy al Qaeda, it will either destroy whatever weapons of mass destruction exist in its control or at least lock those weapons in place due to the loss of a secure transport network.

The United States does not have a perfect picture of the location and movements of al Qaeda globally, but we can assume it has achieved, in the past six months, a picture of al Qaeda that is orders of magnitude superior to the level of knowledge it had Sept. 11. Ideally, the United States would know where every cell is located, but for practical purposes it is sufficient to have identified a majority of the critical nodes in order to disrupt the system and freeze any nuclear devices in place.

In order to achieve this overriding goal, the United States must be able to strike deeply into sovereign countries. Al Qaeda exists, according to U.S. President George W. Bush, in more than 60 countries in the world. Because there are multiple paths that such weapons can take in their movement to the United States, the United States will have to conduct overt and covert operations in virtually all of these countries. It will have to do so quickly and simultaneously. And it will have to do it whether or not it has the permission of the host countries.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's current trip certainly concerns Iraq. Ultimately, both the sources of weapons of mass destruction and any currently deployed weapons will have to be dealt with. However, it is clear Cheney is asking for more than permission to strike at Iraq. He is also asking for cooperation in destroying al Qaeda networks embedded deep in the region's societies. He is making it clear that if the various countries do not cooperate to U.S. specifications, the United States will act unilaterally. Thus, if a Middle Eastern country cannot provide the United States with a high degree of confidence that it is liquidating al Qaeda operatives by itself, Cheney is making it clear that the United States will be forced to deal with the matter itself. In short, U.S. covert operations -- and even overt -- will extend into countries that do not deal with al Qaeda to U.S. satisfaction.

Cheney is arguing with as much earnestness as he can muster that this is not an attempt by the United States to usurp the sovereignty of countries like Saudi Arabia. Rather, it is a desperate attempt by a very frightened United States to deal with a menace that can kill hundreds of thousands -- or even more -- Americans. Cheney is undoubtedly acknowledging the weakness of U.S. intelligence on the specific threat, but he is also arguing that the magnitude of the consequences of failure would be so extraordinary that the United States cannot afford a more limited response. In short, Cheney is arguing that the U.S. response is in fact proportional to the threat.

He is also making a more difficult argument. Al Qaeda as an organization is deeply embedded in many Islamic countries where it has substantial sympathy. Cheney is arguing that U.S. demands for cooperation and access represent a special case. The countries he is visiting, like Saudi Arabia, understand that the elimination of al Qaeda to American specification is impossible to achieve -- certainly in a single brilliant strike. If the Americans are serious about al Qaeda, it will mean an ongoing U.S. presence and intervention in their own social fabric. In order to protect the American social fabric, the United States will wind up with oversight, if not control, over other societies.

The fear that is stalking the Middle East -- and Europe as well -- is that the American war against al Qaeda will institutionalize the American empire. The United States emerged from the Cold War as the world's only superpower. It could have imposed a global hegemony, but it had neither the appetite nor the interest in doing so. Instead, it engaged in a series of fairly random interventions around the world. This irritated many but frightened few.

The threat from al Qaeda has generated an American appetite and interest in imperial control. The internal workings of Pakistani or Saudi or Indonesian ministries and intelligence services is now a matter of extreme national interest to the United States, and it is prepared to exert its power in order to get those entities to operate in a manner that coheres with American interests. Even more important, the United States is now deeply interested in what takes place within these societies and intends to intervene as necessary. More than during the Cold War, and now extending globally, the United States expects sovereign countries to allow it access and control over their internal affairs.

The belief in much of the world, and certainly in the Middle East, is that the United States is simultaneously irresistible and intolerable. They do not believe that the United States will ever pull back from its covert and overt interventions. These states completely believe Dick Cheney when he describes the depths of American fears of al Qaeda. The problem is that they do believe him. They also believe that the American confrontation with al Qaeda or its successor organizations will not end with the crystal clarity that the Administration is hoping for. No matter how perfectly executed the special operations attacks on al Qaeda cells are, how accurately U.S. air strikes -- some using nuclear weapons -- are in destroying dangerous WMD facilities, no matter how quickly Saddam can be toppled, the United States will not be able to put closure on its confrontation with Islam.

Without that closure the United States will not be able to relinquish its oversight and control of parts of governments in the Islamic world and elsewhere. This will lead to one of two things. The United States will be so effective that the morale of the Islamic world will be shattered and the regimes that cooperated will become colonial puppets of the United States. Or, alternatively, the strikes will result in a massive upsurge in anti-Americanism in the Islamic world, and regimes that cooperated with the United States will be swept away.

The fear in America is of nuclear weapons. The United States has no interest in empire, per se. However, the pursuit of al Qaeda results in an imperial situation regardless of the intent. The rest of the world may have no interest in protecting al Qaeda, but the price of calming American fears will result in an American imperium, regardless of intent. This issue is most salient in the Middle East and in the rest of the Islamic world. It is, however, only somewhat less salient in Russia, China and even among U.S. allies in Europe. All of them see the relentless pursuit of al Qaeda as opening the door to a degree of imperial hegemony by the United States that could become intolerable to them.

The Iraq issue is merely a minor part of the puzzle. From the standpoint of its neighbors, Iraq has become a tolerable, manageable problem. The United States is now prepared to redesign the region in its pursuit of al Qaeda, but Iraq's neighbors are not eager for that redesign. The real, underlying issue is that the United States wants to redesign the internal operations of every state and society in which al Qaeda is operating -- and to review progress as it happens.

The United States is not doing this because it wants an empire. It is genuinely fearful of al Qaeda, and with good reason. The resistance comes not from nations that want the United States nuked by al Qaeda. It comes from nations that are afraid that surrendering part of their sovereignty in the war against al Qaeda will result in the permanent loss of sovereignty. And these are reasonable fears.

Ultimately, the United States is overwhelmingly powerful and in most state-to-state relations either irresistible or a force to be reckoned with. It will get more cooperation than not, and where it does not get cooperation, it will strike anyway. Empires are born out of material such as this. They arise almost accidentally as nations seek to calm their deepest fears.

Interesting article. However, one could question whether nukes are the biggest threat. Biowarfare is much cheaper and easier, though the TV images aren't as spectacular. Here's the review of Germs, which unfortunately was a very Clinton-friendly book (the Clinton criticism is the NR's, not the books') but raised some valid points:

http://www.nrbookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=C5889:

Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War

Miller, Judith; Engelberg, Stephen; Broad, William

Osama bin Laden doesn't need nuclear weapons technology to launch a cataclysm that will make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like a child's game. All he needs is access to the chemical and biological poisons that rogue states have been producing in massive quantities for decades. And getting hold of these germ weapons would be easy for him - as Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War reveals. In Germs, a trio of New York Times investigative reporters -- Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad -- reveal the shocking proliferation of chemical weapons and how close the nightmare of bio-warfare and bio-terrorism is to coming true. Miller, Engelberg, and Broad also detail how a group of clear-thinking officials and scientists ultimately persuaded Bill Clinton to begin a defense program against chemical weapons - a program that critics deride as too little, too late.

Germs brings you up-to-the-minute information on this rapidly evolving threat. Miller, Engelberg, and Broad interviewed hundreds of key figures and experts on biological weaponry -- including Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel laureate who helped perfect genetic modification of germs to make them more lethal, and who now devotes his life to trying to contain the destructive power he has unleashed.

Germs introduces you to Soviet scientists who, in the waning years of their fanatical quest for world domination, brewed enough anthrax to kill every man, woman, and child on earth (and who are now courted for their expertise by terrorist groups worldwide). Miller, Engelberg, and Broad even include eye-opening revelations from recently declassified documents - and take you on a tour of the sinister, ruined Soviet laboratories that were once devoted to making these "poor man's hydrogen bombs."

Yes, it's disquieting reading. But precisely for that reason it's all the more important for every lover of freedom to read Germs, in order to be thoroughly informed about these horrific weapons - and ready to do whatever it takes to protect our children and our homes from their scourge.

Alarming but all too true: a few of the shocking revelations in Germs:

* How a wacked-out religious cult used germ warfare against its opponents in Oregon in the Eighties - and the government covered up the full story

* "Designer pathogens": how scientists have cooked up strains of viruses and bacteria that are far more deadly than anything in nature

* The Soviets' secret weapon: a germ they developed that causes unimaginable damage to the body - and shows no signs of its presence before it starts to work

* An American germ warfare specialist on Chinese and Russian efforts as far back as the Seventies: "If we had known what they were really doing, we would have worked harder"

* Stepnogorsk: how the Soviets' chief chemical weapons lab was once turning out over three hundred tons of anthrax spores each year - and now lies in highly toxic ruins

* How the Pentagon dithered and bungled during the Persian Gulf War in the face of the threat from Saddam Hussein?s biological weapons

* Did the Soviet Union test horrible biological weapons on humans? The facts

* The Soviets' stockpile of chemical evils - from anthrax and encephalitis virus to smallpox and even bubonic plague: where did it all go when the Soviet Union collapsed?

* The Japanese "publishing company" that quietly went about amassing the ingredients for chemical and even nuclear weapons - while no one in American intelligence recognized the danger

* Why the U.S. Senate blocked funding for chemical weapons research just as the Soviets were making their most ominous research breakthroughs

* The Soviet scientist who died after infecting himself with the deadly Marburg virus: the virus mutated while passing through his body, giving his colleagues a deadly new strain that they developed into a weapon

* Why the military was reluctant to vaccinate our soldiers against anthrax during the Persian Gulf War

* The world's response to the growing dangers of germ weapons: why it has fallen far short of what is needed

* The Ohio army veteran who bought three vials of plague bacteria with alarming ease

* Iraq: the truth about Saddam's extensive array of germ weapons for battlefield use, from missiles to bombs to jet-mounted aerosol tanks

* Why Saddam Hussein remained determined to keep his chemical weapons factories running, despite losing billions of dollars in oil revenues

* The shocking extent of American unpreparedness for a germ warfare attack

Why a germ attack is likely:

The emergence of the United States as the world's most powerful nation has made biological attack more likely. Adversaries that resent America's global dominance, envy its wealth, or fear its overwhelming military power can fight back most effectively with unconventional weapons. The attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in which a modern warship was crippled and nearly sunk in October 2000 by a dinghy packed with explosives and detonated by suicide bombers, showed how the seemingly powerless can strike a devastating military blow. In the coming years, those willing to die for their cause may well choose instead to become smallpox carriers or Marburg martyrs.

The pace of scientific advance has also intensified the germ threat. Cohen's and Boyer's pioneering work a quarter century ago helped give scientists new tools to improve crops and cure disease. But genetic manipulation can also be exploited to disorient, maim, and kill. . . . The spread of recombinant knowledge through scientific exchanges and commerce has given even modestly skilled scientists the means to create havoc. In a decade or two, terrorists may no longer need to hire their own germ experts.

If America suffers a germ warfare attack, will Bill Clinton sleep soundly?

There was significant waste in the Clinton years. Biological defense turned into an entitlement program for federal agencies, private contractors, and government consultants. While many projects were well intentioned, the administration failed to give any single official the authority to eliminate duplications, enforce discipline, and direct the money to where it would do the most good. . . . Although the president delivered two major addresses on the dangers of biological warfare, the administration never marshaled its resources to strengthen the germ treaty or to promote a coherent program of biodefense. Distracted by impeachment, the administration's attention to these issues as intense but episodic, a poor recipe for explaining a complex problem to the American people. . . .

We remain woefully unprepared for a calamity that would be unlike any this country has ever experienced.

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