What goes around in GWOT, comes around in GWOT

"Talks To Disarm Shiites Collapse: Prime Minister Is Said to Cancel Tentative Pact," by Dexter Filkins and Erik Eckholm, New York Times, 1 September, p. A1.

"12 Hostages From Nepal Are Executed in Iraq, a Militant Group Claims: Gruesome images stand out because of the sheer number of the dead," by Sabrina Tavernise, NYT, 1 September, p. A8.

"Beneath Putin's Pedestal, the Ground Keeps Shaking: Russia's leader is supposed to provide stability. But that's what the country is missing," by Steven Lee Myers, NYT, 1 September, p. A4.

I hate to say it, but I think the back and forth with al-Sadr isn't going to end any time soon. This guy's negotiating tactics remind me of Arafat's: hard-core right up to the point where he's going to suffer a conventional defeat, and then he promises to rehab himself and join the political process, but then within days he's right back at the violence again once you've let your guard down, so you pummel him some more and the cycle of lies and apparent compromises continues to no good effect over time.

I am relatively sanguine about such a long-term course of events in Iraq because the situation there continues to serve the long-term purposes of the GWOT, which frankly is all about internationalizingóthroughout the Coreóthe "new" threat of terrorism that the United States feels it is living with as a result of 9/11. So if our continued long-term occupation of Iraq leads to all sorts of other countries falling into their own showdowns with terrorism, whether it's hostages in the Middle East or violence within their own borders, it's better that we've made the Middle East and the global terrorism that its non-integration with the rest of the world has spawned the number one security issue for as many significant players throughout the Core as possible. In short, Iraq can't ever really get "too bad" for the purposes of getting the rest of the Core to wake up to the real security challenges that lie ahead for us all. In some ways, the worst thing that could have happened would have been for the Iraq occupation by the U.S. military to have gone too well, because if it had, neither the changes needed within the Pentagon nor within what should become a Core-wide collective security system would have begun.

Is that trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? Not really. In the end, it's only being realistic about how things change: i.e., failure brings change, not success.

I know that all sounds scary, because what people want to hear is that the GWOT will lead immediately to increased levels of stability and security. But it won't. We're at a point in history when new rules are emerging all over the place on issues of global stability and security, so expect more violence in the short run, not less, and expect to read more stories about everything going to hell in a handbasket, not fewer.

The choice between Kerry and Bush is not one between more or less violence and instability in the global security system, but rather a question of which leader will navigate us and the Core as a whole toward the promised land faster. Another way to put it is to say, Have we had enough of Bush's necessary "unilateralism" and should we now turn to a more nuanced Kerry sort of multilateralism? Or is that inevitable historical switch premature at this point?