The Big Bang as strategyómisunderestimated

Dateline: US Airways Express commuter plane heading from NYC to Providence, 5 May

REFERENCE: ìIraq, Terrorism Strain Brittle Mideast Status Quo,î by Hugh Pope, Wall Street Journal, 5 May, p. A12.

This is the best story to date on the real purpose of taking down Saddam andóby doing soólaying a System Perturbation on the Middle East.

This is what I say in the section of Chapter 5 called, ìThe Big Bang as Strategyî (I adapt this for the Esquire article just coming out now):

ìThe only way America can truly achieve strategic security in the age of globalization is to destroy disconnectedness. We fight fire with fire. Al Qaeda, whose true grievances lie wholly within the Persian Gulf, tries to destroy the Coreís connectedness on 9/11 by triggering a System Perturbation that throws our rule sets into flux. Their hope is to shock America and the West into abandoning their region first militarily, then politically, and finally economically. They hope to detoxify through disconnectedness. America decides correctly to fight back by trying to destroy disconnectedness in the Gulf region. We seek to do unto al Qaeda what hey did unto us: trigger a System Perturbation that will send all the regionís rule sets into flux.

What that Big Bang strategy really means is that we are trying to start a profound, region-wide tumult that will reorder the Middle East for the better. Guess what? That means more terrorism, instability, and mass violence in the short-run, not less. This reality gets lost in all the nonsensical talk about ìbringing democracy to Iraq.î The Big Bang may eventually trigger such long-term developments, but in the short and medium run, itís all about triggering change by destabilizing the brittle, authoritarian status quo that generates so much insecurity within the region and terrorism directed abroad. In short, the Big Bang purposefully seeks to redirect that terrorism back to the source.

Hereís the key opening sequence of the Wall Street Journal article:

ìTerrorist plots and attacks gaining traction across the Mideast since the U.S. invasion of Iraq are undermining a status quo in force since colonial powers left the region in the 1950s.

ëWhat weíve seen so far is like the first stirrings of a volcano. I believe it is the prelude to a big explosion,í says Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi. The war in Iraq, he argues, has served as a catalyst for popular hatred of the West and also of brittle and oppressive local regimes. While the different attacks donít appear to have been centrally organized, he says the attackers have been ëlinked ideologically. . . Itís the result of decades of frustration.í

In the past year, plots, attacks and occasional civil unrest have hit Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, including five major incidents in the past month alone. Just as worrisome, similar phenomena have occurred in Muslim communities in Spain, France and Britain, as well as Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines. The current framework of the Middle East has survived wars and coups before, and no government seems in any immediate danger of falling. But stress is beginning to show.

ëThe war in Iraq has exposed the vulnerabilities of governments and emboldened people to challenge the status quo. Some are doing it peacefully, some violently,í says Kevin Rosser, a terrorism expert at London security company Control Risks. ëIraq has focused anger from a variety of sources: political rigidity, the Arab-Israeli situation and Iraq.í

The upsurge of terrorism in oil-producing states like Iraq and Saudi Arabia is having an impact on the world economy. Worries about the stability of oil supplies caused prices of U.S. benchmark crude for June delivery to rise $1.60 over the past two days to close yesterday at $38.98 a barrel, a 13-year-high, partly in reaction to a shootout in the Saudi port of Yanbu on Saturday in which five Western oil workers and a Saudi were killed. Economistsómost recently the International Energy Agency on Mondayóare warning that high oil prices are denting global economic growth.

The attacks are also putting pressure on the way the Middle East has been divided up since the 1920s. Instability in Iraq is raising questions about its survival in the multiethnic form set up by the British Empire after World War I, says Rosemary Hollis, a Middle East expert at Londonís Royal Institute of International Affairs. That is in turn raising questions about many Middle Eastern borders set up by Britain and France at that time, propped up by them until the 1950s and carried on until today by authoritarian regimes.

ëThere is a sense that the old order could be up for grabs,í Ms. Hollis says, pointing out how disadvantaged Islamists, Shiite Muslims and Kurds are bidding for power at the expense of the previously dominant Sunni Arab nationalist establishments throughout the region.î

You want the great plot decoded for you? This article comes as close to capturing what Iíve been talking about in my brief for months and in my book just out: the Saddam takedown was just the beginning of the System Perturbationónothing more than the vertical scenario to trigger a host of horizontal ones.

This Big Bang is just beginning to get underway, so buckle up, because itís going to be a bumpy decade.