30 March 2007
Building a Hegemony of Values
Can Shelby Steele’s definition of victory in Iraq be valid? In his OpEd article in the Wall Street Journal on December 8, 2006, he fails to see that the collapse of the bipolar world caused by the crash of communism has made it more costly for the West to shepherd the Third World into the culture of material wealth. In the past, military and political competition with the Soviet bloc could force them to rain financial aid on Third World countries, satisfying their hunger for economic well-being (or, at least, their own dictators’ corrupt concupiscence). Now, it has become the singular burden of the “sole superpower” and its dependent societies in the West to instruct and finance the development of the Third World.
While waiting for this relief effort, or in disbelief it will ever come, Islamic terrorists have indeed resorted to menace as their tool of leverage over their perceived cultural oppressors. But their determination not to organize into an integrated foe protects them from being vulnerable to military control. This is an advantage of fundamentalist nihilism. It makes winning the hearts and minds of their populations all the more difficult, because they are not accessible through weapons and armed tactics.
Victory against Islamic terror must be defined in terms of cultural transformation. It can only be achieved through information and persuasion, not attack and police action. The American ambivalence that Mr. Steele complains about has arisen because we realize that our security will be a lot more costly than sending a half million troops and spending ten billion dollars a month in supplies and equipment. We shrink from undertaking the hard work needed to give an equitable stake in global economic wealth to the Islamic and other cultures of the Third World.
Can Shelby Steele’s definition of victory in Iraq be valid? In his OpEd article in the Wall Street Journal on December 8, 2006, he fails to see that the collapse of the bipolar world caused by the crash of communism has made it more costly for the West to shepherd the Third World into the culture of material wealth. In the past, military and political competition with the Soviet bloc could force them to rain financial aid on Third World countries, satisfying their hunger for economic well-being (or, at least, their own dictators’ corrupt concupiscence). Now, it has become the singular burden of the “sole superpower” and its dependent societies in the West to instruct and finance the development of the Third World.
While waiting for this relief effort, or in disbelief it will ever come, Islamic terrorists have indeed resorted to menace as their tool of leverage over their perceived cultural oppressors. But their determination not to organize into an integrated foe protects them from being vulnerable to military control. This is an advantage of fundamentalist nihilism. It makes winning the hearts and minds of their populations all the more difficult, because they are not accessible through weapons and armed tactics.
Victory against Islamic terror must be defined in terms of cultural transformation. It can only be achieved through information and persuasion, not attack and police action. The American ambivalence that Mr. Steele complains about has arisen because we realize that our security will be a lot more costly than sending a half million troops and spending ten billion dollars a month in supplies and equipment. We shrink from undertaking the hard work needed to give an equitable stake in global economic wealth to the Islamic and other cultures of the Third World.
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