Return-Path: <sentto-279987-2714-1002288091-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.1.0) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Fri, 05 Oct 2001 06:22:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 16563 invoked by uid 510); 5 Oct 2001 13:21:32 -0000 Received: from n16.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.66) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 5 Oct 2001 13:21:32 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-2714-1002288091-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.53] by n16.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Oct 2001 13:21:31 -0000 X-Sender: fc@big.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_4_1); 5 Oct 2001 13:21:30 -0000 Received: (qmail 41433 invoked from network); 5 Oct 2001 13:21:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 5 Oct 2001 13:21:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO big.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta2 with SMTP; 5 Oct 2001 13:21:29 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by big.all.net (8.9.3/8.7.3) id GAA17828 for iwar@onelist.com; Fri, 5 Oct 2001 06:21:29 -0700 Message-Id: <200110051321.GAA17828@big.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 06:21:28 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:A.Growing.List.Of.Foes.Now.Suddenly.Friends] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit [FC - With friends like these, who needs enemies? - original source long forgotten...] New York Times October 5, 2001 News Analysis A Growing List Of Foes Now Suddenly Friends By Serge Schmemann UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 4 - The terror attacks of Sept. 11 forced an immediate and radical shift in American relations with the rest of the world. What had been a drifting search for a foreign policy by a new Republican administration suddenly acquired a hard, overarching purpose, in which friends and foes were coldly redefined according to whether they were with the United States or against it. The realignments have been staggering. A few short weeks ago, Washington viewed Central Asia, if it viewed the region at all, as a nest of nasty despots; Russia was a nagging has-been doing bad things in Chechnya, and the United Nations was a bloated organization whose conference on racism had to be boycotted. The Mideast was a quagmire, but the real threats were in Asia - the rogues in North Korea and the increasingly assertive rulers in China. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is on his way to Uzbekistan, now critical to any punch into Afghanistan; Russia is at the front of the cheering section for an assault on Islamic zealots, and the United Nations is echoing to unceasing declarations of support for America. Some of these declarations come from governments like Sudan or Syria that figure prominently on the State Department's list of countries that harbor terrorists. Accusations of isolationism from frustrated allies have evaporated as the Bush administration probes every corner of the globe for allies, dangling the promise of tangible benefits, diplomatic or financial, for those who rally to the cause. Pakistan - a country that has seen a democratic government overthrown, has supported the Taliban in Afghanistan and has tested nuclear weapons - is at the front of the line. At times, it feels as if the cold war is back, only with a new and very different enemy. But response to a clear and present danger is not yet a foreign policy. What the United States and much of the rest of the world has proclaimed as a war on terrorism is really, for now, at least, a hunt for Osama bin Laden and his associates. Nobody yet knows how long that will take, or what will take shape after the smoke of the first strikes settles. Even if Mr. bin Laden is eliminated, his network will take years to eradicate, with the constant danger of new attacks from his enraged comrades. All the experts agree on for now is that Sept. 11 marked a tectonic shift. But the real debate and the real sorting out of friends and foes are likely to begin in earnest only after the first passions have quieted. The very definition of the enemy is certain to become fuzzier with time. In its absolutist theology, Al Qaeda managed to alienate or frighten virtually every government in the Middle East and beyond, except for the Taliban who gave it refuge. Its reactionary vision of a pure, theocratic state and its rabid anti-Americanism threatened to radicalize every Arab street and challenged every secular, moderate or corrupt regime in the Arab and Islamic world. But immediately beyond Al Qaeda, the high moral condemnations of global terrorism rapidly become relative, and the definition blurred. The Security Council resolution calling on all states to join in controlling the financing and movements of terrorists avoided giving a definition, though the chairman of the committee set up to implement the resolution, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the United Nations, declared that it was self- evident: "What looks, smells and kills like terrorism is terrorism." Even groups that have been declared terrorist by the State Department, like the militantly Islamic and anti-Israeli Hezbollah and Hamas, have been set aside in the new war in the higher interest of garnering broad Arab and Islamic support against Al Qaeda. In fact, only Iraq appears to have generated any serious consideration in the administration as a potential co-enemy. The quandary is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Israel, Washington's closest ally in the Middle East and the recipient of the biggest share of American foreign aid, may be more nervous these days than its neighbors or enemies. Any anti-terrorist coalition, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned in the Jerusalem Post, "will not be at our expense." "I don't think it's so difficult to say who is a terrorist, at least not for the American government and public," said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins. "The question is what to do about it." The situation, of course, is not that new. The United States has wooed the Arabs before, most notably President Bush the elder for the coalition in the Persian Gulf war, and the realities of global politics have always made for curious and shifting bedmates. The United States teamed up with Stalin against Hitler, and then spent 40 years single-mindedly waging a cold war against the Soviet Union. Nobody was disqualified as an ally in that struggle, from China on down to Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and that self-same Taliban. Yet few veteran foreign policy watchers can remember when a single event has had so instant and so profound an effect on the entire dynamic of world politics. "It is essential to mobilize with great urgency when an enemy strikes suddenly and catastrophically," Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, said this week. "Decisions and actions that would normally occur over 5 to 10 years occur in only a few months. But this accelerated fight against terrorism must be integrated into a broader national security strategy. We must understand what changed on Sept. 11, and what did not change." ------------------------ Yahoo! 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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-12-31 20:59:54 PST