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The Coalition Trap?
by Jonathan Foreman
The New York Post, September 20, 2001

The Bush administration has wisely chosen to think carefully about where, when and how we will strike - rather than, as the Europeans and perhaps bin Laden expected, to reflexively launch a score of cruise missiles at targets in Kabul and Kandahar.

But the talk of "building a coalition" should not fill anyone with confidence about our ability to fight this war. At best, this talk is an excuse for delay. More likely, it's a panicked surrender to the temptation to refight the last war.

Worst of all, it indicates a dangerous refusal to adjust to the demands of a new reality, a reality in which the U.S.A. will have to go it more or less alone. The fact is that a Gulf War-style coalition may hinder more than help us in the new kind of war under discussion - a type of warfare which will almost certainly require our trampling on the sovereignty of "rogue states" like Iraq that have strong links to Bin Laden.

Take Secretary of State Colin Powell's drive for cooperation with Pakistan. It is foolish and even unfair to expect Pakistan to do much for us. The regime led by Gen. Musharraf knows all too well that if it is seen to cozy up to America, the country could be plunged into civil war by a strong, well-armed fundamentalist minority with significant support in the officer corps and among the Pathan tribes along the Afghan border.

And Pakistan's powerful intelligence service, the ISI, will do whatever it can to protect both bin Laden and the Taliban. It was the ISI (not the CIA, contrary to myth) that set up the Taliban militia in the first place.

It was also the ISI that, back in the '80s, made sure that money and weapons from an easily manipulated CIA ended up in the hands of Gulbedin Hekmatyar, the most anti-American and anti-Western Afghan guerilla leader.

Indeed, the ISI has sponsored, with bin Laden, groups that have commited outrages in Indian Kashmir. It almost certainly also had a hand in the horrific bomb attacks on Bombay in 1993.

Then there's Powell's bizarre notion to include both Syria and Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority in our anti-terror coalition. What good can come out of pretending that the Syrians - who continue to use terrorists to wage proxy war against Israel and Turkey - are our friends?

Our Saudi "allies"? They rewarded our Gulf War friendship by obstructing the investigation into the bombing murder of Americans in their own country, and by refusing to allow U.S. troops there freedom of worship.

NATO? Well, Turkey remains a genuine American ally that can be relied upon to live up to its NATO obligations. But the whole idea of forming a military coalition seems even more dubious as several of our traditional European allies quickly distance themselves from the obligations they undertook in the aftermath of last week's attacks.

Generally their withdrawal is accompanied by talk about "justice, not revenge" or about the dangers of lashing out in a poorly thought out, vengeful (i.e., what they see as typically American) way.

The implications are clear:

1) Though the ordinary people of Europe East and West have shown their affection and sympathy for us in ways that are wonderfully moving, their leaders subscribe to the stereotype of America as a nation of dumb, greedy, violent yahoos with too much power and money for anybody's good.

2) They don't take the NATO treaty the least bit seriously.

3) The Europeans hold fast to a dangerous modern myth: the idea that "justice" can be achieved between states, as if the world were analogous to a nation whose citizens live under the rule of law. But if justice does exist in the international arena, it is only poetic justice or the wild justice of revenge. The rest is fantasy or convenient dishonesty.

Now, you'd half-expect France to back off from any commitment to help the United States in its hour of need. Even if France didn't have business links to U.S. enemies like Iraq, its anguish at the global triumph of what the French call "anglo-saxon culture" is unbounded.

Nor is it a surprise that Belgium, that small, corrupt home of European Union bureaucracy, should do the same. Nor that Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino has vaccilated on commiting Italian troops to any coalition.

In Greece, which saw an explosion of anti-American sentiment during the Kosovo war, journalists at Kathimerini (the leading daily paper) apparently cheered when they saw footage of the attacks. Expect Greece to give the smallest aid possible, then claim that we blackmailed them into it.

Outside NATO, it's a sad surprise to see Russia back off from her early promises of help. Apparently, she won't let us use her bases in the independent, unstable Central Asian republics.

The Indians, our new friends, are standing by us. Their intelligence service has already passed useful information to the FBI which has discreetly opened an office in New Delhi.

In fact, much of the English-speaking world is behind us, with our British cousins once again in the forefront. The vast majority of Britons view our losses as their losses (e.g., British soccer players wore black armbands this weekend).

Now, we will remember those who genuinely stood by us after our people were butchered, and those who did not. But the relatively bleak conclusion that we are essentially going to have to walk this road alone is just one of the unpleasant facts we are going to have to face if we are going to win this war.