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Abstract
The war on al-Qaeda and its affiliates appears to be endless but every war must end. Winding down the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq has been difficult, but both were embedded in what was then called the ‘war on terrorism.’ What does ‘success’ in that war mean? With the death of bin Laden and the increase in drone operations, how far is the US from achieving it? Can this war end? The article analyzes the ongoing US response to the 9/11 attacks in historical context, revealing four patterns common to all prolonged wars: means become ends, tactics become strategy, boundaries are blurred, and the search for a perfect peace replaces reality. It concludes by laying out an effective strategy for ending the war.
Notes
1 See Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘How Al Qaeda Ends: The Decline and Demise of Terrorist Groups,’ International Security 31/1 (Summer 2006), 7–48; and How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton: Princeton UP 2009).
2 These include Gideon Rose, How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle (New York: Simon and Schuster 2010); Dan Reiter, How Wars End (Princeton: Princeton UP 2009); and Matthew Moten (ed.), Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars (New York: Free Press 2011).
3 Michael Howard, ‘Are We at War?’, The 2008 Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture, London, 6 Apr. 2008, published in Survival 50/4 (Aug.–Sept. 2008), 247–56, and Philip B. Heymann, Terrorism, Freedom and Security: Winning Without War (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 2003). See also Adam Klein, ‘The End of Al Qaeda? Rethinking the Legal End of the War on Terror,’ Columbia Law Review 110/7 (Nov. 2010), 1865–10; Bruce Ackerman, ‘This is Not a War,’ Yale Law Journal 113/8 (June 2004), 1871–907. Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of the UK’s MI5, called the attacks ‘a crime, not an act of war’, ‘Lecture one: “Terror,” BBC Reith Lectures 2011: Securing Freedom,’ 6 Sept. 2011.
4 Curtis A. Bradley and Jack L. Goldsmith, ‘Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism,’ Harvard Law Review 118, 2078.
5 US Declaration of State of War with Japan, Dec. 8, 1941; and Declaration of State of War with Germany, Dec. 11, 1941, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/decmenu.asp>.
6 Amy Belasco, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11, CRS Report for Congress RL33110, 29 Mar. 2011, 5. Of the $1.121 trillion enacted in the ‘Global War on Terror’ by 2010, about $1.1 trillion went to the Department of Defense.
7 The war in Iraq had its own legislation (Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002). Although presented as part of the response to 9/11, the Bush administration realized it was to some degree separate.
8 Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘Why Drones Fail,’ Foreign Affairs 91/4 (July/Aug. 2013), 44–54.
9 See Hew Strachan and Holger Afflerbach (eds), Why Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender (Oxford: Oxford UP 2012).
10 Bradley and Goldsmith, ‘Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism,’ 2066–7.
11 Chapter II, Paragraphs 7 and 21, Sun Zi, The Art of War, translated by Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford UP 1963), 73 and 76.
12 Speech by the Athenians to the Spartan assembly, 432 BC, The Peloponnesian War, 1.78 [3], translated by Richard Crawley; The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, edited by Robert B. Strassler (New York: Free Press 1996), 44.
13 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton UP 1976), 143. Clausewitz also warns the reader ‘war is no pastime … it is a serious means to a serious end’ and ‘[t]he original means of strategy is victory – that is, tactical success; its ends, in the final analysis, are those objects which will lead directly to peace’ (Book 1, Section 23, 86).
14 Col. J.F.C. Fuller, The Reformation of War, Chapter XI: The Meaning of Grand Strategy (New York: E.P. Dutton 1923), 215.
15 B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (London: Faber and Faber 1954 and 1967), 322.
16 Iklé, Every War Must End.
17 Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 16 May 2013. ‘Pentagon: US Still in Armed Conflict with al-Qaeda,’ Military Times, 16 May 2013, <http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20130516/NEWS/305160010/Pentagon-U-S-still-armed-conflict-al-Qaida>.
18 For another perspective on what ‘winning’ means, see Philip H. Gordon, ‘Can the War on Terror be Won?’, Foreign Affairs 86/6 (Nov./Dec. 2007), 53–66.
19 David J. Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 28/4 (Aug. 2005), 597–617.
20 Mary Habeck, ‘Can we Declare the War on al Qaeda Over?’, Foreign Policy.com, 27 June 2012, <http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/27/can_we_declare_the_war_on_al_qaeda_over>.
21 But not all. The United States seems to be interested only in insurgencies that are linked to Al Qaeda in some way. Joshua Kurlantzick, ‘Thailand’s war without an audience,’ Boston Globe, 22 July 2012.
22 These subheadings are drawn from the arguments in Iklé’s Every War Must End.
23 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book One, Chapter One, 89.
24 John O. Brennan, ‘The Ethics and Efficacy of the President’s Counterterrorism Strategy,’ 30 Apr. 2012, <http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy/#>.
25 Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, ‘A hidden world, growing beyond control,’ Washington Post, 19 July 2010. A response by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is at <http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/politics/question_and_ans wer_ic.pdf>.
26 Ibid.
27 Mark Mazetti, ‘Former spy with agenda operates a private CIA,’ New York Times, 22 Jan. 2011.
28 William L. Painter and Jennifer E. Lake, Homeland Security Department: FY 2012 Appropriations, CRS Report for Congress R41982, 21 Feb. 2012, <http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R41982_20120221.pdf>. See Table 3, ‘DHS Appropriations, FY2003-FY2012,’ 7.
29 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security Strategic Plan: Fiscal Years 2012-–2016, Washington, DC, Feb. 2012, p. 3; at, <https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/dhs-strategic-plan-fy-2012-2016.pdf>.
30 Curtis W. Copeland, The Federal Workforce: Characteristics and Trends, CRS Report for Congress RL34685, 19 Apr. 2011, <https://opencrs.com/document/RL34685/>, 21.
31 US General Accountability Office, Actions Needed to Reduce Overlap and Potential Unnecessary Duplication, Achieve Cost Savings, and Strengthen Mission Functions, Report GAO-12-464T, 8 Mar. 2012, <http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-464T>.
32 Shawn Reese, FY 2011 Department of Homeland Security Assistance to States and Localities, CRS Report for Congress R40632, 26 Apr. 2010, <http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R41105.pdf>.
33 Ashley Halsey, ‘Decaying infrastructure costs US billions each year,’ Washington Post, 27 July 2011.
34 Ibid.
35 Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘The Evolution of Counterterrorism: Will Tactics Trump Strategy?’, International Affairs 86/4 (July 2010), 837–56.
36 Iklé, Every War Must End, 14–15.
37 Scott Shane, ‘CIA to expand use of drones in Pakistan,’ New York Times, 4 Dec. 2009.
38 Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, ‘War evolves with drones, some tiny as bugs,’ New York Times, 20 June 2011; and ‘“PlayStation pilots” are taking over from the top guns as Air Force switches priorities United States,’ The Times (of London), 2 Aug. 2012, 27.
39 New America Foundation, ‘The Drone War in Pakistan: Analysis’, 26 Sept. 2013, <http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis>. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, ‘Get the Data: Drone Wars,’ <http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs/> also provides a comparable estimated range of drone strikes.
40 Gregory D. Johnson, ‘A Profile of AQAP’s Upper Echelon,’ CTC Sentinel 5/7 (July 2012), 6, and Jo Becker and Scott Shane, ‘Secret “kill list” proves a test of Obama’s principles and will,’ New York Times, 29 May 2012.
41 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, ‘Yemen 2002–2013: US Covert Action,’ 26 Sept. 2013 <http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/blog/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs/>. Strikes in Yemen have included more traditional cruise missiles and Harrier fighter jets, as well. Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti, and Robert F. Worth, ‘Secret assault on terrorism widens on two continents,’ New York Times, 14 Aug. 2010.
42 ‘Somalia: Reported US Covert Actions 2001–2012,’ The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 22 Feb. 2012, <http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/22/get-the-data-somalias-hidden-war/>.
43 Sean D. Naylor, ‘The Secret War: African Ops May be Just Starting,’ Army Times, 5 Dec. 2011, <http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/12/army-africa-mission-may-be-just-starting-120511w/>.
44 Shane et al., ‘Secret Assault’. See also Mark Mazetti, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the World (New York: Penguin Press 2013).
45 Iklé, Every War Must End, 2.
46 Jo Becker and Scott Shane, ‘Secret “Kill List”.’
47 Cronin, ‘Why Drones Fail.’
48 Iklé, Every War Must End, 2.
49 Elizabeth B. Bazan, Assassination Ban and EO 12333: A Brief Summary, CRS Report for Congress RS21037, 4 Jan. 2002. Original report at <https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit>.
50 Section 2a of the 2001 AUMF; and Barton Gellman, ‘CIA contemplates assassination jobs,’ Washington Post, 28 Oct. 2001.
51 This was the case, for example, in the secret war in East Africa. Reluctant to put captives on trial, the US reportedly rendered captives to a CIA clandestine prison in Afghanistan. Naylor, ‘The Secret War.’
52 Shane et al., ‘Secret Assault.’
53 Thom Shanker, ‘US weighs its strategy on warfare in cyberspace,’ New York Times, 19 Oct. 2011.
54 The exact figures are in dispute. See Douglas Waller, ‘Special Operations Spending Quadruples,’ Bloomberg, 7 June 2011, <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-07/special-operations-spending-quadruples-with-commando-demand.html>.
55 Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti, and Thom Shanker, ‘Admiral seeks freer hand in deployment of elite forces,’ New York Times, 12 Feb. 2012.
56 Jeffrey Gettleman et al., ‘US swoops in and frees two in Somali raid,’ New York Times, 26 Jan. 2012.
57 Schmitt et al., ‘Admiral seeks freer hand.’
58 Iklé, Every War Must End, 9. Reiter, How Wars End, 66.
59 Eric Schmitt, ‘Ex-counterterrorism aide warns against complacency on Al Qaeda,’ New York Times, 28 July 2011, <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/world/29leiter.html>.
60 The Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), <http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/>.
61 These numbers were reached by searching the database for incidents between 1970 and 1979 (or 1980–1989, 1990–1999, etc.), in the United States, with all criteria for terrorism, and all incidents included regardless of doubt. The post-9/11 search was 12 September 2001–31 December 2010. The number of fatalities for the decade 2000–2010 (with the 9/11 attacks) was 3011 in 184 incidents.
62 Perhaps not even then. See Cronin, Chapter 5: ‘Repression: Crushing Terrorism with Force,’ How Terrorism Ends, 115–45.
63 ‘Remarks by the President at the National Defense University,’ Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 23 May 2013, <http://www.whitehouse.gov>.
64 Daniel Benjamin, ‘Establishment of the Bureau of Counterterrorism,’ Special Briefing at the US Department of State, 4 Jan. 2012, <http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/rm/2012/180148.htm>.
65 Schmitt, ‘Ex-Counterterrorism Aide.’.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Audrey Kurth Cronin
Audrey Kurth Cronin is Distinguished Service Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, USA, and Senior Research Associate at the Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton: Princeton UP 2009).