Transcript

Host: This is “On the Line,” and I'm Eric Felten. The War on Terrorism has been compared to the Cold War, which President John F. Kennedy described as “a long twilight struggle.” President George W. Bush has explicitly made the parallel. “Today's War on Terror is like the Cold War,” Mr. Bush said. “It is an ideological struggle with an enemy that despises freedom and pursues totalitarian aims. Like the Cold War, our adversary is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent and they lack the resolve to defend our way of life.”

The United States and other democracies needed both military and economic strength, as well as an ideological appeal, to outlast the Soviet Union. In that battle of ideas, democracy ultimately prevailed over Communism, but it took some forty years. Is that experience relevant to the present-day struggle against violent Islamic extremists.

The Soviet Union was a superpower with a vast standing army and an arsenal of nuclear weapons. By contrast, the jihadists operate in relatively small groups scattered around the globe. They strike from the shadows, and most of their efforts have been limited in their destructiveness -- the attacks of September 11, 2001, being a notable exception.

What are the similarities and what are the differences between the Cold War and the War on Terror? I'll ask my guests: John O'Sullivan, editor at large of National Review magazine and author of a new book on three Cold War leaders; Walid Phares, author of a new book called “The War of Ideas,” which looks at the ideological clash between jihadism and democracy; and Gerard Baker, U.S. editor and assistant editor for The Times of London newspaper. Welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

John O'Sullivan, are there significant similarities between the Cold War, on the one hand, and the current War on terrorism?

O'Sullivan: Well, there certainly are similarities. You mentioned one -- or, the president mentioned one, which is to say it’s an ideological struggle between, on the one hand, Western liberal democracy, and, on the other hand, a group very strongly opposed to it. The second similarity is that these are not wars in which great armies engage in great battles and cross deserts or in the middle of Europe. They're wars waged either by proxy states, in the Cold War, or by small terrorist groups. And the third similarity is one I'm very surprised to find myself making. I would never have guessed this, but there is, in both cases, a fifth column. There are people in Western society who sympathize with the other side. That was an easy thing to do, in some respects, in the Cold War because it was another European set of ideas that were being used to attack the West. But it is extraordinary to find people who are, let us say, feminists and, let us say, gays sometimes sympathizing with a doctrine, a set of ideas, which are radically opposed to their interests. But they do so because they dislike their domestic opponents so very strongly.

Host: Walid Phares, what's your sense on similarities between the war on terror and the Cold War?

Phares: Well, there are two major levels of similarities. Of course, they are different, but basically number one has to do with the objective of the players -- specifically, in this case, the authoritarian side, the totalitarian side -- world domination and suppression of liberty, suppression of pluralism. It's strangely very, very similar. But also, another thing is the internal evolution of the authoritarian side -- the Soviet Union was a major player, and then the Chinese came with another form of Communism. In the jihadist movement you had in the early ‘20s -- the Salafist Sunni -- a very large web of Islamists, then followed in the ‘70s by what I compare to the Maoists -- an Iranian, Shi'a-background Khomeinist trend. And both have [tended] to look at the world as an objective, but they have different geopolitical tactics.

Host: Gerard Baker, your sense on this question?

Baker: I think that there are important differences, which both of you have actually just outlined. And I think that probably the most important similarity is that we are, in the West, involved in a struggle which is really a struggle, actually, for the survival of what we stand for, which is our liberal way of life, our belief in freedom and pluralism and democracy, against people who would try and do that. I do think the most interesting aspect of this is that it's being -- and we're going come, obviously, to the differences, but I think the key difference which stems from this similarity is that in the Cold War what we were talking about was essentially symmetrical warfare. We were very similar in terms of the way in which we were promoting warfare, defending ourselves, and promoting our interests to the way the Soviet Union was, which is that we both had very large armies and we faced each other down mostly in Central Europe and, to some extent, in other parts of the world, too. This time it's asymmetrical. The jihadists don't have anything like the scale of conventional military forces or, indeed, of non-conventional military forces. But what they have, crucially, I think, which the Russians and the supporters of the Soviet Union -- the Warsaw Pact -- didn't have is an absolute, unshakeable faith, which is essentially illustrated through suicide bombing and through a belief in jihad as leading them into paradise. That's what makes this so similar in that respect -- in that, although in the end we could fight -- if we had to, we would fight the Soviet Union with the traditional weapons that we had. In the end, the Soviets were probably not going to engage in a struggle that would result in their own annihilation. They didn't really want to die. The awkward thing, the difficult thing we face right now is that our opponents actually want to die, and they want to kill as many of ours in the process at the same. So, although their military threat is not the same -- not on anything like the scale of the threat that was opposed against ours in the Cold War -- the ultimate, if you like, the existential threat is actually that much greater, I think.

Host: Walid Phares, you've written in your book about the central role of this love of death in the jihadi ideology. How does that affect this?

Phares: It's a weapon. As we mentioned before, Communists being Marxists, being atheists, do not believe in the afterlife, so they were sure to accept the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrence. The jihadists can't, do not. So the issue of -- it's the jihad or suicide bombing or the love of death, as an objective, gave them and gives them a lot of strength. But on the other hand, the fact that we are now a worldwide society of globalism -- information travels from one side of the world to the other side of the world in much easier ways than it did under the Cold War and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or even in China. So that may be to the advantage of the free world today -- that they can impact the other camp, but the other camp -- obviously, with the power of oil, the power of lobbyists -- can also impact our decisions. So we are in a more intertwined Cold War kind of conflict.

Host: John O'Sullivan, yes.

O'Sullivan: There is another interesting difference. In the Cold War, it turned out one of the biggest weapons that the West had was the dissatisfaction of the peoples of the Soviet bloc, who, in the end, rebelled and overthrew the system. And they did so because they were encouraged by the West, but they did so. Now, in the main, there aren't many places ruled by jihadists. In fact, there's only one -- Iran. Otherwise, we can't really appeal to discontented populations. But in the case of Iran, we know that the population there is extremely discontented with the radical mullahs and also that it's probably the single most pro-American population in the Middle East. And that's something which we haven't really taken advantage of up to this point, partly because of other problems with Iran.

Host: Well, Walid Phares, on this question, when you try to promote democracy in the Middle East, you run into the problem that the jihadist movement is ready and espouses participating in a democratic process, but not necessarily for the long-term democratic system.

Phares: Exactly. The problem is -- and the difference, as well, with the two wars, the jihadi war and the Communist war -- is that in Europe, at least, and western parts of Russia, Enlightenment had happened before, a hundred and two hundred years ago. So they were societies that understood separation of power. Some of them in Eastern and Central Europe have even experienced political parties -- so on and so forth. In the Middle East, in the Arab/Muslim world, Enlightenment either didn't happen or is happening now. So if you open up a society and say, “Let's go to elections,” the most organized faction is going to win -- at least, the first elections. But in other circumstances, such as in Iran, for example -- because they had a minimum experience with sort of influence by the West just before the revolution occurred, then a third generation of Muslim Shi'a and others in Iran is very attracted to Western ideas. They have not experienced it, but they have seen it on TV, satellite, and on Internet.

Host: Gerard Baker, on this question, do you have a problem in trying to appeal to the Middle East with questions of democracy that they appear foreign and that the jihadis are able to portray them as foreign rather than being able to appeal to them as part of a tradition that may have been in place before you had a foreign power come in and take over?

Baker: There is some difficulty, although I wouldn't overplay that, because I do think also -- I remember very well that was some of the stuff that was said in the Cold War, too -- that, actually, Russia had never been a democracy. You could never expect Russia to be a democracy. It's always been ruled by autocrats for centuries. And most of those countries in Eastern Europe had simply been pawns in the game, and China had never been a democracy. And all of these countries that we were fighting over -- in Africa, for example, or in Latin America it was said -- Latin America, which was a key part of the geography of the Cold War. Again, people said, “You know, those countries have never been democratic. They just can't. Democracy is a sort of Western European/North American thing which won't spread.” And that was wrong, actually. I mean it turns out that in Eastern Europe -- you can argue Russia has a kind of democracy now. It's not a very attractive one, but at least it's moved in the right direction. And Latin American has clearly moved in the right direction. So I wouldn't overstate this idea that there is something radically different about the Middle East or about the Islamic world in general. Obviously, there are important differences, but it seems to me you have got Islamic states. You have got states that are predominantly Muslim that have democracies -- again, not like the kind that we would have here in the U-S or in Western Europe. But take Turkey, which is a ninety-percent-Muslim state -- has a pretty good, thriving democracy. Malaysia has, again, not something that many people in the West would necessarily want to replicate, but it has a kind of democracy. So increasingly does Indonesian. So this idea that this is completely incompatible with the Islamic world, I think, is just wrong.

Host: John O'Sullivan, let's talk a little bit, though, about as the Cold War unwound and its relation to the war on terrorism. The West saw the collapse of the Soviet Union in one way as a vindication for freedom and liberty and the fight of the Cold War. Osama bin Laden saw the collapse of the Soviet Union in a very different way. And what has been learned by the jihadi camp by the fall of the Soviet Union?

O'Sullivan: Well, he saw it, of course, as the result of the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. And his view -- and that of the Ayatollah Khomeini before him -- was that it was the Muslim world which had defeated the Soviet Union. That, of course, is a grotesque oversimplification. There was no doubt that the Muslim Mujahideen played a role, but of course they were strongly assisted by the West. If they hadn't been given some of the modern advanced weapons that brought down, for example, Soviet helicopter gunships, then they wouldn't have been able to win the war. And so that's an argument which I think is quite false. The Western interpretation is far truer. But I do think there is something important here, and I wonder whether Walid Phares would agree -- that, in addition to the force of Western democracy and then the opponent jihadist force, there's also what you might call “traditional society” out there, which is not yet part of the modern world. Now, they -- the jihadists -- are trying to bring those traditional societies into the modern world via their own system. It's a mistake to think of jihadists as medieval people. They're modern people. They're modern people with medieval ideas which they're attempting to marry to modern technology and some other modern ideas. And it is perfectly possible for societies to enter the modern world, to move from tradition to the modern world, through reactionary forces. I would argue myself that modern Ireland entered the modern world through the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, and, as a result, it was a modern society of a rather backward kind for many years. That ceased to be true. And that's what they are trying to do. It's an important -- It's wrong to think of these people as lost in the past. They are a possible future.

Host: What do you think of that, Walid Phares.

Phares: I think that's true. Modernity is mostly technological -- a leap in technology. Political development is something else. It's a revolution. I call it a jihad “Stargate.” Their ideas are often Middle Ages, seventh century, but they move through twenty and twenty-first century with technologies -- mullah online, Al-Qaeda pilots. It's quite possible that in the future there will be jihad in space if that is not reversed in Muslim societies.

Host: Gerard Baker, what lessons did the jihadis learn from the collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of this ideological battle there? Has it affected the way they have brought their fight against the West?

Baker: Well, I think, as both Walid and John have said, the principal lesson they drew is that it was the power of Islam, the power of faith, actually, over this great atheist power that triumphed, and they've taken that lesson in particular. I do think one really important difference -- and John hinted at this at the beginning by his reference to fifth columnists, if you like -- is that the way we are waging this war or we have to wage this war is very different from the way we waged the war in the Cold War because we actually have -- the enemy really is the enemy within in most Western societies, particularly in Western Europe, where I think a large part of this fight is being played out and will increasingly be played out. This fight is being fought against people who are not only sympathetic to but actually fervent supporters of jihad within those societies themselves. And they take advantage of the very freedoms that we believe in, that we support, and that they oppose. They take advantage of those freedoms that we practice, that we allow in the West, to undermine the very society itself. This is a real challenge to us, which we had a little bit of in the Cold War, but nothing like this scale. We didn't face -- I mean, put simply, in Europe, there are probably tens of thousands -- maybe even hundreds of thousands -- of people who certainly are sympathetic to and probably actively support jihadists who want to go around like the London underground bombers in July of ‘95, like the Madrid bombers in 2004. Sorry -- the London bombing was in 2005. The Madrid bombing was in 2004. They actually are trying to destroy the society from within. And, as I say, they are using the weapons of -- They're using the weapons of society -- the methodology, the basic system that we have -- to destroy us. And that is a real challenge, and we haven't really successfully countered that yet.

Host: Walid Phares, how does the West go about confronting that challenge and doing so in a way that doesn't drive Muslims who are not part of the jihadi camp into the arms of the jihadi camp?

Phares: If I may first state one point on another lesson from the Soviet collapse which I see in websites on Al-Jazeera -- sometimes debates, very interesting. They have seen how reform and reformation has brought down the Soviet Union. They will not go glasnost and perestroika. That's why they are tightening -- the Salafists, the Khomeinis. They saw what happened in 1989. So because of that, they are now very hard-liner in ideology. And because of this, in the West, they are spreading the Wahhabi, Salafi, or Khomeinist ideology. It is not the radicalization of Muslim communities because of frustration in foreign policy or other social economics. Europe has been so diligent and a welfare state. It is because of the penetration by the jihadists, which is an organized network which is in control of the various centers that provides the mind with a direction. So you may well be born in London or in Marseilles or in Madrid, but where were you born culturally? It's a tight, closed entity, which is controlled by the Wahhabi clerics. That's the war of ideas, basically.

O'Sullivan: And I would add to that that if you are a young Muslim born and brought up in England or France or Holland, it's very likely that you've grown up in a society -- in fact, it's certain you've grown up in a society which has no pride in itself, which is no longer able to say to you, “We're proud of our identity. You should want to join us.” That would not have been true fifty years ago. The British and the French were proud of themselves now. It's because their societies are full of self-doubt and that there's nothing to assimilate to that, I think, you get the problems that you get with Muslim immigration and young Muslims in Europe and which you don't get -- at least, you don't get to the same degree -- in the United States, where patriotism is still a living force.

Host: Gerard Baker, to what extent does that contribute And is this a war not only of ideas but of identities?

Baker: Yes, it is, and I think John's right. Certainly that's true in Britain -- that jihadists there are not confronted by a powerful sense of national pride and national identity. I do think the other issue here -- and, again, Walid touched on this before. It's another question that I don't think is properly answered yet. It's the extent to which -- Obviously, to some extent, we won the Cold War because of the combination of globalization, if you like, the increasing integration of the world economy, and the increasing openness of the world economy -- and, actually, economic advance, too. And part of the reason there is no doubt that people in Eastern Europe were extremely dissatisfied with Communism was not just because, obviously, it infringed on and, in fact, it restricted their liberties -- it actually crushed their liberties -- but actually because it didn't deliver anything, either. It didn't deliver them economic advancement. It didn't deliver them the nirvana that Communism had promised them. What, again, I'm not clear about and which may make the war against jihadism actually harder to crack is whether economic progress, which, obviously, has been -- which in the Middle East has not been prevalent in the last five hundred years -- But in Europe, interestingly, Europe has had a relatively successful economic performance over the last fifty or sixty years. Some of those people who have become jihadists -- very interesting in Britain -- were not necessarily people who were disaffected, who were the economic underclass in Britain, but they were actually people who had become sort of part of the middle class. So it's not clear to me that economic progress, as welcome as it would be, is actually going be as effective this time in undermining the appeal of these radical extremists.

Host: We've got about one minute left, and let's move around the table quickly. What needs to happen next to succeed in the war of ideas?

Phares: First of all, we have to win the war of ideas at home, as the gentlemen -- both of them -- said, meaning to make sure that the public in America and Western Europe, Australia, other democracies understand the threat of jihadism. We're still behind. While in the Cold War we understood who the enemy was, we are still having a debate about it. Number two, that we link up with civil societies in the Middle East, have our alliance with the N-G-Os, women's movements, students' movements. And it's a long war, not necessarily by military means. It's certainly by cultural and educational means.

Host: John O'Sullivan, about twenty seconds left.

O'Sullivan: I agree with that. I would say the first step, however, is for the Western European countries to recover a sense of their own decency and strength of identity. And that means their elites have got to stop criticizing them and running them down in favor of other, more fashionable identities which don't have any real force.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word for today. We're out of time. But I'd like to thank my guests -- John O'Sullivan, author of “The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister -- Three Who Changed the World;” Walid Phares, author of “The War of Ideas -- Jihadism Against Democracy;” and Gerard Baker, U-S editor for The Times of London. I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On the Line,” I'm Eric Felten.