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Why Al Qaeda Is Losing the War on Terror
Because the Middle East is catching up to — and connecting with — the rest of the world. And no matter how much peace Osama bin Laden's No. 2 tries to offer Barack Obama, there is no stopping globalization's power over extremism.

By Thomas P.M. Barnett

On Monday, the latest video surfaced from Osama bin Laden's longtime deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, featuring his usual sermon on the state of the radical Islamic struggle against the United States. The gist: Al Qaeda is winning hands-down, natch. Trouble is, it's not.

The message wouldn't have attracted any more media attention than his thirty-or-so similar videos from the past three-and-a-half years except, of course, for his affirmation that a truce with President Obama is still on the table: If America is willing to "concede" radical Islam's "victory" throughout the greater Middle East by withdrawing all of its troops, then Al Qaeda will stop targeting Americans.

Some offer.

And in making it, al-Zawahiri accuses Obama, upon whom he conferred the title of "house negro" soon after his election win, of being nothing more than "the new face of the same old crimes" — namely, "a relationship with [Islamic lands] based on suppression." But that's just putting a familiar face on Al Qaeda's deeper fears: America certainly does its best to suppress radical Islam, but that's not what scares al-Zawahiri and bin Laden — having to integrate with the rest of the world does. Career opportunities and a better life, after all, means fewer young people driven to extremism.

And that's exactly what's happening: Radical Islam has overplayed its hand again, creating popular resentment escalating to political backlash. We're the ones winning this struggle across the board, and not only should Obama ignore the offer of a truce as we press forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan (it would only allow Asia to step in for the oil money) — he should make explicitly clear to Al Qaeda that we'll never acquiesce to their desire for civilizational apartheid between the West and the Arab world, even as isolationists and defeatists on our side would just as soon erect a fence around the whole Islamic world to let them fight it out amongst themselves. Why? Because the penetrating embrace of globalization is doing the truly profound damage to Al Qaeda, and we are globalization's bodyguard. The flow of proliferating networks that offer ideas and conversations and products and expressions of individualistic ambition — especially with regard to women — offer radical Islamic groups no hope of gaining permanent political control.

As if al-Zawahiri's smoke-blowing video — as close to an admission of strategic failure as we're likely to get out of Al Qaeda for the foreseeable future — wasn't enough, poll after poll confirms the trend: Al Qaeda's appeal — along with violent extremism in general — is waning across the Islamic world while America's has been significantly improved by Barack Obama's election and subsequent efforts at civilizational dialogue (which clearly has Al Qaeda's leadership worried, as evidenced by the amount of time al-Zawahiri spent in this last video attempting to diminish it). As Thomas Friedman pointed out recently, radical Islam's only successes as of late have involved stoking sectarian and ethnic feuds — hardly the calling card of a successful international ideological movement.

The Middle East currently suffers from a destabilizing youth bulge around people between the ages of 15 and 30. In two decades time, the region's demographic center of gravity will have shifted upward commensurately, meaning the Middle East will hit "middle age." What do we know from this shift in other parts of the world? That criminal behavior wanes, meaning bin Laden and Al Qaeda do not have time on their side.

That's not to diminish the economic challenge, because as that youth bulge ages out into its natural earning years, roughly 100 million new jobs will need to be created in the greater Middle East by 2030. If those jobs aren't there, then we're looking at a double whammy: all those unemployed thirty- and fortysomethings plus their disappointed kids, who will form another, smaller (but not inconsequential) youth bulge in the 2020s.

In America's persistent struggle against violent extremism triggered by globalization's advance, there will always be the temptation to return to history's sidelines, much like we did after World War I. But our now decades-long success in creating and defending and expanding an international liberal trade order (now known as globalization) has created this larger, unpalatable reality: The United States is no longer in control of this process and thus cannot "turn off" its resulting challenges.

Globalization is not some elite conspiracy hatched in Manhattan or Davos; it's now largely fueled by the ravenous demand for a decent lifestyle by an emerging — and huge — global middle class located overwhelmingly beyond our shores. That world-spanning force demands the Islamic world's progressive integration into globalization's vast universe.

And when it comes to that fundamental reformatting process, resistance — be it radical Islam's or isolationist America's — is futile.
Posted by: Steve White 2009-08-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=276188