The war on terror in American grand strategy

The 9/11 attacks made the war on terror the central plank of American grand strategy. Yet despite its importance in shaping US policy choices, there has been considerable confusion over how the war on terror relates to foreign policy goals. This article attempts to locate the war on terror within American grand strategy and makes three claims. First, it argues that the Bush administration's approach to the war on terror rests on a false analogy between terrorism and fascism or communism. This has led to misinterpretations of the goals of the war on terror and to a persistent misuse of American power. Second, it suggests that the central purpose of the war on terror should be to de‐legitimize terror as a tactic and to induce states to assume responsibility for controlling terrorists within their borders. American grand strategy should be focused on creating a normative anti‐terror regime with costly commitments by linchpin states—defined as great powers and crucial but endangered allies such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—rather than on conducting regime change against rogue states on the margins of the international system. Success in the war on terror should be measured not by the perceived legitimacy of discrete US policy choices, but by the number of these crucial states who accept the de‐legitimation of terrorism as a core foreign policy principle and act accordingly. Third, it argues that bilateral enforcement of an anti‐terror regime imposes high costs for US power and puts other elements of American grand strategy— including the promotion of democracy and the promotion of human rights—at risk. To reduce these costs and to preserve American power over the long‐term, the US should attempt to institutionalize cooperation in the war on terror and to scale back ambitious policy choices (such as achieving a democratic revolution in the Middle East) which increase the risks of state defection from the anti‐terror regime.     

How Oil Twists the Hegemon's Arm: The Case of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Their Ambivalent Partnership

The U.S.–Saudi relationship is often seen as an oxymoron. These allies have differed in their foreign policy interests — varied in the need, one for the other — but never severed ties. When the 9/11 attacks are added to the mix, questions are raised about why these ambivalent allies continue to tolerate each other. This study argues that although the United States is the preponderant power, Saudi Arabia has primacy in the energy market. This has caused both countries to remain allies through the different oil crises, the 9/11 attacks, and in spite of the Arab‐Israeli conflict. This contravenes the hegemonic stability theory about alliance formation and duration. Saudi Arabia's roles in the 1973, 1979, 2008, and 2012–2015 oil crises all demonstrate its ability and willingness to act independently of the United States. The fact that it can do this and still maintain its strategic partnership with the United States is incredulous. This invites a revision of the hegemonic stability theory since strong and persistent defection from the hegemon's wishes should catalyze some comparable form of punishment or a severance of the relationship.     

Planned International Technology Transfer:

Since the mid-1980s, Saudi Arabia has required that a percentage of all defense contracts awarded to foreign suppliers be reinvested back in the kingdom into new technology companies. The result has been three “economic offset” programs, encompassing Western defense producers and their home-country governments in the world's largest example of planned international technology transfer. This paper reviews the three main Saudi offsets—attached to the Peace Shield (United States), al-Yamamah (United Kingdom) and Sawari (France) arms deals—for their genesis, operations, achievements, and problems, using interviews with participants and statistical data on companies formed. It then attempts some evaluation of them against their own original explicit and implicit goals, and draws out some lessons and implications.     

Understanding Saudi Arabia's Influence on Pakistan: The Case of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism

The launch of the Saudi‐led so‐called Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) in 2015 tested the strong strategic alliance between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In light of concerns about the positioning of the coalition of 41 states against Iranian interests in the Middle East, Pakistan's initial response to the Saudi demand to join the war in Yemen was a polite refusal by means of a unanimous decision of the parliament. However, under tremendous pressure from Riyadh and other Gulf States, Islamabad later capitulated and backtracked from its initial decision. This paper analyses the unique nature of the relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia through a dissection of the various dimensions of the Kingdom's cultural and political influence on Pakistan. It also illuminates Saudi hegemonic strategies and the manner in which Islamabad adjusts and is influenced as well as coerced to revise its foreign policy choices. This paper argues that Saudi's diplomatic strategies, political pressure and pledges of generous financial assistance ensured Pakistan's participation in IMAFT.     

Covering the Building of a Kingdom: The Saudi Arabian Authority in The London Times and The New York Times, 1901–1932

The orientalist literature subjected the Middle East in an exotic way — mostly as an “Arabian Nights” society ruled by traditional sultans and/or tribal chiefs — rather than modern governance structure's “bureaucracy.” The presumption within postcolonial scholarship has been that this perception influenced the policy landscape in the United States and Europe, especially the media depictions of the oriental leaders and leadership. The paper empirically tests this hypothesis through content analysis using Weber's categorization of leadership of two newspapers of record — The New York Times in the United States and The London Times in the United Kingdom — during the period of state building in Saudi Arabia (1901–1932). I find that rather than depicting the Saudi leadership as “backward,” these newspapers in particular, tend to overstate the development of the Saudi state during this period. As Weber is best known for his three types of authority, it benefits the discipline to see how the interpretive communities of Western journalists operationalized “authority” in terms of politics and religion of Saudi Arabia as this monarchy emerged.     

Long wars and long telegrams: containing Al-Qaeda

Can history help the ‘war on terror’? It is a cliché that 9/11 changed the world. But the idea that the war is exceptional lacks historical perspective. Assuming a radically new threat, the Bush administration proclaimed a theology rather than a coherent strategy. It articulated the ‘war on terror’ as a utopian and unbounded quest for absolute security. It did not effectively measure costs against risks or orchestrate ends, ways and means. This led the United States into exhausting wars of attrition. A more careful dialogue with the past can address this. Containment, America's core idea during the Cold War, supplies a logic that can inform a prudent strategy. Like Soviet communism with its fatal self‐contradictions, Al‐Qaeda and its terror network is ultimately self‐destructive without major military operations. America and its allies can contain it with more limited measures in the long term as it destroys itself. The US should show restraint, doing nothing to hinder the growing Islamic revolt against Al‐Qaeda. In other words, fight small and wait.     

Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism and Nationalism: The Evolution of Wataniyya into Qawmiyya

For many scholars, the Arab Spring was actually an Islamic Winter, especially when ISIS rose up in Iraq and Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood won democratic elections in Egypt and took control over the state. But in other unshaken regions in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and the GCC states, the Arab Spring or the Islamic Winter led to something different, which I will call “rethinking nationalism.” This article asserts that since Saudi Arabia's independence in 1932, the royal family has succeeded in forming Wahhabi nationalism, meaning that despite the fact that all Saudi civilians enjoy Saudi citizenship, only those who ascribe to the Wahhabism creed can be part of the nation in terms of political participation and policy decision‐making. Although some steps in affirmative action have been taken in recent years — also as a Saudi response to the Arab Spring — toward women and the Shi'a minority, these groups or sectors still are not perceived by the royal family as part of the nation, and probably not as equal citizens, for religious reasons that over the years have distinguished between real Saudi nationalist groups and Saudi civilians.     

Iran's Shortsighted Policies in Iraq: Between Inflaming and Containing of Radical Sunni Islam: 2003–2015

The main goal of the 2003 war with Iraq of the coalition forces led by the United States was to topple Saddam Hussein's regime and establish a new political system that would adopt democratic practices. Iran, a country that deemed Saddam's regime to be a threat, considered this war to be very helpful in many ways — first because it put an end to Clinton's “dual containment” approach and would thus help Iran to become a regional superpower at Iraq's expense. Second, a war with Iraq could put an end to the decades of oppression of the Shi'a community in Iraq. This article argues that Iran's involvement in Iraq's internal affairs created chaos in Iraq and contributed to the sectarian conflict against Sunni terror groups, notably the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known by the Arabic name Daesh, a terror group with the most extreme form of Sunni Radical Islam ever known. The sectarian conflict that resulted from the above is now taking place between the Sunnis and the Shi'a of both Persian and Arab backgrounds and this clash could not have become as radical as it is without Iran's aggressive foreign policy. It should, however, be noted that Iran is not the sole player in the country and therefore its part in inflaming sectarian conflicts should be viewed through a realistic prism that allows other forces — domestic and foreign — to be seen as having influenced the events for their benefit.     

The Coverage of Saudi Arabia in the “Introduction to Sociology” U.S. Textbooks between 2001 and 2015

This article discusses the coverage of Saudi Arabia in “introduction to sociology” textbooks in the context of two variables — the September 11, 2001 attack, and globalization. The study covers 24 major textbooks, all published between 2001 and 2015. The textbooks were chosen with the help and consultation of many colleagues in numerous sociology departments throughout various parts of the United States. Also, the publishers of sociology textbooks were consulted throughout the process of selection. The method of investigation was content analysis which relied heavily upon studying the content of the text. The findings were organized in the following subsections: Islam; the Wahhabi version of Islam; Politics; September 11th and Bin Laden; Women in Saudi Arabia; Human Rights and Civil Rights Abuses; Social Media; Miscellaneous Positive or neutral comments on Saudi Arabia; Visual Sociology; and closing remarks. The finding of the article is more or less negative, as textbooks rarely mentioned positive things about Saudi Arabia.     

Ordinary Emergency: Drones,Police, and Geographies of Legal Terror

This paper brings into conversation two ostensibly disparate geographies of state violence: the routine police surveillance and killing of members of the “dangerous classes” in the United States, an issue that is in no way new but nevertheless has gained increased attention over the last year with the Black Lives Matter movement; and the targeted drone strikes against “terrorist suspects” in the “war on terror”. By laying side by side the “war drone” and domestic police power, it becomes readily apparent that despite ostensible differences—foreign vs. domestic, war vs. peace, exceptional vs. normal, military vs. police, legal vs. extralegal—the unmanning of state violence gains much of its political and legal force from the language and categories that have long animated the routine policing of domestic territory. The paper calls for taking the violence of police power more seriously than many drone commentators have.     

Ten years on: Obama's war on terrorism in rhetoric and practice

Ten years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, the United States remains embroiled in a long‐term struggle with what George W. Bush termed the existential threat of international terrorism. On the campaign trail, his successor as US President, Barack Obama, promised to reboot the ‘war on terror’. He claimed that his new administration would step back from the rhetoric and much of the Bush administration policy, conducting a counterterrorism campaign that would be more morally acceptable, more focused and more effective—smarter, better, nimbler, stronger. This article demonstrates, however, that those expecting wholesale changes to US counterterrorism policy misread Obama's intentions. It argues that Obama always intended to deepen Bush's commitment to counterterrorism while at the same time ending the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq War. Rather than being trapped by Bush's institutionalized construction of a global war on terror, the continuities in counterterrorism can be explained by Obama's shared conception of the imperative of reducing the terrorist threat to the US. The article assesses whether Obama has pursued a more effective counterterrorism policy than his predecessor and explores how his rhetoric has been reconstituted as the actions of his policy have unfolded. By addressing his policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, Guantánamo Bay and torture, the uses of unmanned drone attacks and domestic wire‐tapping, this article argues that Obama's ‘war’ against terrorism is not only in keeping with the assumptions and priorities of the last ten years but also that it is just as problematic as that of his predecessor.     

Justifying sacrifice: Barack Obama and the selling and ending of the war in Afghanistan

Since taking office, United States President Barack Obama has attempted to refocus and revitalize the US war against terrorism. The centrepiece of this effort has been an increased emphasis on the war in Afghanistan, which he has characterized as the real frontline of the war on terror—as opposed to the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq war. After years of fighting under the Bush administration, Obama has had to ‘sell’ to the US public the renewed effort in Afghanistan and bordering Pakistan in order to maintain support for his policy. In speeches and other public pronouncements, Obama has drawn heavily on the idea of ‘sacrifice’ to justify the deepening of the commitment to the war, arguing that the costs of the war are necessary in order to keep the US safe from further terrorist attacks. This article explores this symbolic engagement with the sacrifices being made in the name of keeping the United States ‘safe’ from terrorism. It considers whether this approach resonates with public and elite opinion; it also considers the sustainability of underlying public support for the war and analyses how Obama has adapted his approach in order to fulfil his goal of drawing the US intervention to a close. While Obama appears to have judged well the price that the US public is willing to pay to defend against terrorism, it is argued that there are major risks involved in using the central principle of sacrifice when justifying the war. Obama has risked creating a ‘sacrifice trap’ whereby the more emphasis is placed on the sacrifices being made, the more necessary it becomes to demonstrate outcomes that make those sacrifices worthwhile. Obama's ultimate objective of withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan may yet be undermined, therefore, by the justifications he has given for the continued importance of the commitment.     

A forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East: US democracy promotion and the ‘war on terror’

Following the 11 September terrorist attacks, a belief has emerged that one of the root causes of Islamic extremism lies in the repressive nature of the regimes that populate the Middle East. Thus the spread of democracy has become a major component of the Bush administration's ‘war on terror’ Previously dismissed as Wilsonian idealism, the promotion of democracy is now considered a strategic necessity to address the threat posed by terrorism. Despite the significant role democracy promotion has played in the present foreign policy of the United States, the focus has tended to be on the more controversial policies of preventive warfare and coalitions of the willing. The purpose of this article is to help rectify this imbalance by examining the role the promotion of democracy plays within the current administration's foreign policy in the Middle East. It considers the logic behind America's ‘forward strategy of freedom’ in the Middle East as well as the likelihood of this strategy succeeding.     

The shifting politics of foreign aid

The war on terror and the war in Iraq pose three challenges for foreign aid. The first concern is that donors may hijack foreign aid to pursue their own security objectives rather than development and the alleviation of poverty. The second concern is that the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the wider war on terror will gobble up aid budgets. The third concern is that major donors are continuing to impose competing and sometimes clashing priorities on aid recipients and this erodes rather than builds the capacity of some of the world's neediest governments. This article assesses the emerging aid policies of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union and proposes practical measures that could bolster an effective development-led foreign aid system.     

Shorter Reviews

1) Nadje Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Euptian Women's Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
2) Geoff Simons, Saudi Arabia: The Shape of a Client Feudalism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1338)
3) Parker T. Hart, Saudi Arabia and the United States: Birth of a Security Partnership (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998)
4) Marion Boulby, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Kings of Jordan, 1945–1993 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999)
5) Ahmad S. Moussalli, Historical Dictionary of Islamic Fundamentalist Movements in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 1999)
6) Noam Chomsky, 9–11 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002)
7) Eqbal Ahmad, Terrorism: Theirs and Ours (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002)
8) As'ad AbuKhalil, Bin Laden, Islam and America's 'New War on Terrorism '(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002)
9) David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, eds., Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identity in Islamicate South Asia (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000)
10) Mark Tessler, ed., Area Studies and Social Science Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)
11) Zafar Ishaq Ansari, ed., Islamic Studies. Special Issue on Jerusalem (Islamabad: Pakistan, 2001)     

Where is the Islamic republic of Iran heading?

The ‘war on terror’ has had significant repercussions for the Islamic Republic of Iran in both international and domestic arenas. In the international context, Iran is finding itself isolated. Gains made by the moderate leadership of President Khatami in normalising relations between Iran and the West appear to have been lost. In the domestic arena, the moderates seem powerless against the concerted advances of the hardliners, most evident in the February 2004 Parliamentary election.     

Iran's ISIS policy

This article assesses Iran's strategy in dealing with the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It examines the implications of the rise of ISIS in Iran's immediate neighbourhood for Tehran's policies in Syria and Iraq and investigates how each of these countries affects Iranian national interests. It provides an overview of the major events marking Iran and Iraq's relations in the past few decades and discusses the strategic importance of Iraq for Iran, by looking at the two countries' energy, economic and religious ties. It also considers Iran's involvement in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The article sheds light on the unilateral action taken by Tehran to counter ISIS, the adjustments it may have to make to its involvement in Syria, and the potential areas for tactical cooperation between Iran and the United States, as well as other key regional states such as Saudi Arabia. The article investigates three likely scenarios affecting the developments in Iraq and Iran's possible response to them as the events in the Middle East unfold.     

Who speaks for Islam?: ‘authenticity’ and the interpretation of Islamic law in America's war on terror

Recognising that America's response to the events of 11 September would do well to maintain a sharp distinction between the ‘war on terror’ and a war ‘against Islam’, this article argues that American diplomatic rhetoric would benefit from an explicit effort to engage ‘frameworks of legitimacy’ within Islam, including the terms of Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic legal debate. The article examines the merits of such an approach in the context of several recent diplomatic dilemmas, including the Jyllens-Posten cartoon controversy. It concludes with an assessment of the American (domestic) political environment within which this approach tends to encounter its most ardent critics.     

Exploring the Phenomena of Online Dating Platforms Versus Saudi Traditional Spouse Courtship in the 21st Century

While traditional Saudi Arabian courtship is rigidly structured according to a set of Islamic codes of conduct, over the past decade, Saudis have increasingly turned to unconventional means of finding and courting a potential spouse: matrimonial Web sites. This research explores the debate in the literature on computer meditated communication regarding whether online settings provide rich information about other users, as they show that online interactions can provide more information about the opposite sex for users who belong to gender‐segregated societies than they can get through their offline lives. The article will shed some light on the interplay between young generations and their obsessions with the world of Internet dating and the societal norms and social conducts with which they are comfortable while living in Saudi Arabia. The article may contribute to the online dating literature by showing the similarities and differences between conservative, Islamic Saudi users and Western users when using Web sites to search for a potential mate. The research shows the power of both social and religious norms in affecting these users’ behaviors and decisions when using matrimonial Web sites.     

From terrorism to dispossession: Pakistan's Anti‐Terrorism Act as a means of eviction

The discourse of the ‘war on terror’ fails to address the complex and multifaceted structural violence of landlessness, food insecurity and environmental degradation that afflicts the world. Pakistan, for instance, has been a subject of great discussion and geopolitical analysis as the ground zero in the war against terror. However, the scholarship on terrorism in Pakistan analyzes militant and jihadi groups as discrete agents of primordial conflicts, spy agencies and sectarian rivalries with little analysis of the history of the cold war and the effects of the Afghan war. In this article, the author analyzes how the global ‘war on terror’ has proliferated into seemingly unrelated domains of life, and specifically how anti‐terror security legislation has pulled the rug out from under the most successful peasant land rights movement in Pakistan.