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  Date / Time: 10/21/2009 5:48 AM UTC

  Winning The Long War
  

  by Ilan Berman - A great deal has been written about Islamist ideologyand its connection to terrorism, but relatively little of it hasseriously addressed the unique strategic problem that Islamism presentsto the United States: the difficulty that the secular American republichas experienced in framing its intellectual struggle of ideas withideologues whose worldview is religiously-based. It is striking that,thirty years after the Iranian revolution and well more than a decadeafter Osama Bin Laden emerged as a clear threat to the United States,US government statements addressing the various threads of Islamismstill tend be simplistic, often misleadingly so. Indeed, if anything,the American "counter-Islamism" effort has become increasinglyunfocused in recent months, with the new Administration seeminglyplacing great faith in its ability to translate President Obama'spersonal popularity into soft power influence, but no clearlyenunciated vision of what it is going to do with this supposedinfluence—a fact reflected in the Administration's vague andunderwhelming reaction to the explosion of protests in the daysimmediately following the 12 June Iranian presidential election.$0IlanBerman's new book attempts to move the "victory debate" forward in theUnited States. Berman argues that in recent years, military operationshave broken the back of the original Al Qaeda organization. However,rather than progressively fading into irrelevance, as many unsuccessfulterrorist movements have in the past, Al Qaeda has morphed intosomething new, "more an idea than an organization—a Sunni jihadistfront" comprised of many groups that essentially are operationallyindependent.[1] This "3.0" version of Al Qaeda, as Berman calls it, isextremely dangerous, but it does have a critical vulnerability "toproperly calibrated messages that highlight the poverty of its ideas,the costs of its ideological program, and the dire consequences shouldit succeed in its radical endeavor."[2] Also, "[t]he Iranian regime issimilarly bankrupt, on both an ideological and practical level,"[3] aclaim whose accuracy already has been borne out by events.$0Berman'schapter titled "Messaging to the (Muslim) Masses" is a damning, andconvincing, indictment of US public diplomacy in the Islamic world. Heargues that, "Nearly eight years into the fight, America still lacksanything remotely resembling a coherent strategy for competing on theMuslim world's intellectual battlefields. And without one, it hassteadily ceded the strategic initiative to its adversaries, who do."[4]Unlike in the Cold War period, relatively little money is spent onpublic diplomacy, particularly for Muslim-majority countries—Bermangives figures of $1.15 billion for total public diplomacy spending, and"$154 million... for public outreach toward the Middle East, theprincipal theater of operations in the struggle against radicalIslam."[5]$0Winning the Long War also contains a very interestingchapter that offers suggestions on how economic warfare can be wagedagainst terrorist and terror-sponsoring states, particularly Iran, aswell as one on international law, the United Nations, and relatedmatters. The final chapter in the book, titled "StrategicDemocratization," is a brief but thoughtful discussion of thepossibilities and perils—particularly the ability of Islamists to usedemocracy as a tool to advance their agenda—of democratization in theIslamic world.$0Winning the Long War is a valuable contribution tothe policy literature, containing many ideas that merit furtherdiscussion and exploration. Moreover, its brevity makes it accessibleeven for those with little time for reading. It is to be hoped thatmany policymakers, academics, and others will do so.$0[1] IlanBerman, Winning the Long War: Retaking the Offensive Against RadicalIslam (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), p. 2.$0[2] Ibid., p. 26.$0[3] Ibid.$0[4] Ibid., p. 31.$0[5] Ibid., p. 45.
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