President Bush is fighting the wrong war—that’s the message from Philip H. Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who says there are compelling alternatives to the president’s strategy against terrorism that are more faithful to America’s historic traditions, are more likely to attract domestic and global support, and are far more likely to succeed.
“Six years after the start of the war on terror, Americans are less safe, our enemies are stronger and more numerous, and the Middle East, the war’s battleground, is dangerously unstable,” said Gordon, who offers his alternative U.S. foreign policy in a new book, “Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World.”
“The administration is fighting the wrong war,” Gordon told The Washington Diplomat. “It’s fighting against a single enemy, when the enemy is extremely diverse. It’s putting its faith in military power, when ideology, intelligence and diplomacy and homeland security are more important. It’s dividing the American public and alienating the world when national unity and international legitimacy are vital. It’s focusing on a tactic—terrorism—when the real issue is how to address the political, diplomatic, social and economic factors that lead people to become terrorists.”
Gordon, who served as director of European affairs at the National Security Council, is a leading expert on U.S. foreign policy. He has authored or co-authored a number of books on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy, and he has taught at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington as well as at INSEAD in France and Singapore.