Ralph Peters in this position paper, originally posted in 2001 by Parameters magazine, discusses the role that stability plays in our foreign policy over the last 110 years. His point is that sense the Spanish-American war we have spend enormous resources propping up hopeless regimes in the futile attempt to contain the status quo; even at the expense of our shared national values. What’s more, Peters argues that our country’s success is a product of the overthrow of old-world paradigms. As such, the very stability we pursue works against our own long term best interests. The article is a though provoking piece but one paragraph stood out to me. While discussing the role of terrorism in his primary thesis, he makes one of the clearest observations about the nature of Middle Eastern terrorism I have ever read.
While most Islamic terrorism is culturally reactionary, another aspect of it is an impulse for change perverted by hopelessness. And terrorism is, finally, a brutal annoyance, but not a threat to America’s survival, despite the grim events of 11 September. Osama bin Laden and his ilk may kill thousands of Americans through flamboyant terrorist acts, but their deeds reflect tormented desperation and fear, not confidence or any positive capability. Terrorists may be able to destroy, but they cannot build, either a skyscraper or a successful state. Destruction is the only thing of which they remain capable, and destruction is their true god. These men seek annihilation, not only ours, but their own. No entrances are left open to them, only the possibility of a dramatic exit. They are failed men from failed states in a failing civilization. Claiming to represent the oppressed (but enraged by the “liberal” behavior of most Palestinians), fundamentalist terrorists of so hardened a temper would not be contented, but only further inflamed, by any peace settlement that did not inaugurate their version of the Kingdom of God on earth. They are not fighting for a just peace, but for their peace–and even if they attained that peace, they would desire another. They are, in every sense, lost souls, the irredeemable. Their savagery is not a result of the failure of any peace process, but a reaction to their own personal failures and to the failures of their entire way of life.
Another good part is the section discussing the relationship between Islamic governments in the Middle East and the Palestinians. Not exactly light reading, but well worth the time.