Ontology of Threats: Islamists vs. the Soviets

Not that my opinion matters in this discussion among heavyweights, but Stephen Green and Glenn Reynolds have put forward some very thought provoking posts about the nature of the Islamists we are facing today.

Stephen Green offers a substantive disagreement to Glenn Reynolds's view of the level of danger posed by our current Islamist enemies:

It’s not often I disagree with Glenn Reynolds on an issue of substance, but in this case, the Instapundit couldn’t be more wrong. Read:

(ed: Glenn writes) To read some blogs today, you'd think that this was the 9th century, with camel-riding Jihadis ready to descend on helpless American towns, swinging unstoppable scimitars. It's not that way; it's more like the Ghost Dance or similar movements borne of frustration at losing, movements that do their damage all right, but that are doomed to fail. I don't mean to understate the threat, which is real enough. But it's not on the order of the Cold War, you know, and we won that one.
With the one tiny (and farfetched) possibility of instant and total nuclear annihilation, the stakes today are much, much higher than they ever were during the Cold War.

Imagine that the US and Western Europe had succumbed to the Soviet Union, anytime between 1948 and 1989. Did the West lose the Big Battle in World War III, with Spetsnaz paratroopers guarding the streets of Bonn, Paris, London, and Washington? Or did the West lose through a loss of will – ie, adopting Soviet Communism here at home, complete with GULAGs and Five Year Plans and all the rest? Either way, the result would be the same.

The Cold War was the Great Civil War of Western Civilization -- exactly like the Thirty Years War, only greater in scope. If the Russians had won, Western Civ would have gone on as before. Only, you know, a lot more repressed and a lot less rich. As it is, the West did win, and Russia is as Russia was except for that whiff of freedom they enjoy.

Hypotheticals are very instructive and can shed light on complex problems, but let me step back a bit here to point out that the Cold War history has been written. The score on that one ended up with Democracy/Capitalism defeating Totalitarianism/Communism. Nukes were not exchanged, but several proxy wars broke out in Korea, Vietnam, Afhghanistan, Central and South America, and even Eastern Europe if you count the brief attempts at revolution that were violently supressed by the Soviets. The death toll was significant, but almost nothing compared to the two World Wars or the American Civil War.

So far, the death toll in this war hasn't reached anything close to the Cold War, let alone blood baths that I mentioned above. However, the Islamists are not finished, and I think it is fair to compare their nature more to the Japanese on Iwo Jima--we will probably have to fight to the last man. Glenn and others are correct in pointing out that the Islamists are in no ways as sophisticated (ideologically, socially or technologically) as the Soviets were, but they have proven to be very schrewd in taking our technological advances and using them against us.

Now, back to the future, if you will. The ultimate hypothetical fear, of course, is a nuclear, biological or chemical attack on our homeland. Now, I'm not of the hysterical opinion that the moment the Iranians get the bomb, we can expect LA or New York to go up in a firey inferno shortly after, however, based on my assumption above, it is not too far fetched to think that over the course of the next fifty years, there will be an Islamist group that could conceivably end up with a few WMDs.

Kennedy was able to stare down Khrushchev in a game of nuclear blackmale, but I'm not so convinced that our Islamist enemies would be so willing to do the same. Mostly likely, if they did have the capability, they wouldn't advertise it for all the world to see to demonstrate power projection of their pseudo-proxy--it would be used as an offensive weapon just as they tactically used four hijacked airplanes.

If they were able to sneak one in, the casualty count could in an instant make the Cold War look like domestic spat over the remote control. In my opinion, it is more likely that an attack would occur against either Israel, a free Iraq (where the U.S. military is still actively concentrated), or somewhere in Europe versus the American homeland. Direct attacks on United States soil presents a lot of logistical problems that can be avoided.

Regardless of where and when, it is clear that the only deterrant to this threat is to send them to their 72-virgins before they can get a shot off. The mainstream media has negatively likened this to a "whack-a-mole" strategy, however the current administration has developed a policy that attacks the Islamists strategy. A resource poor organization who is logistically challenged now has to fight in their own backyard.

Tactically, we have many challenges, and it is made even more difficult by our culture that has been trained to expect the three-week Hail Mary solution to defeating an enemy. Mythical short-term solutions are a completely absurd way of defeating an enemy who refuses to compromise or be taken alive. Over time, we have more than enough capability to finish this off, but the West has to stay committed to a long-term fight.

While the Soviets were a much more powerful enemy who could have set a war off with a much more devestating loss of life, they didn't. The Islamists, on the otherhand, are only limited by capabiity, not by desire. If they gain even a fraction of what the Soviets achieved technologically, we could see the single biggest human catastrophe in history. So, based on this, I'll echo Stephen Green's thoughts and choose a good Cold War scrap any day of the week, and twice on Sunday, over those we are facing now.