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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 10/03
Terrorism and Asymmetric Conflict in Southwest Asia
Shahram Chubin and Jerold D. Green
June 2002
Introduction
At previous RAND-GCSP workshops in 1999 and 2001, participants examined, respectively, possible roles for NATO in the Middle East and the challenges to Turkey as both a European and Middle Eastern actor. The 2002 workshop, scheduled for June 23-25, 2002, was originally intended to take a broad look at issues relating to Southwest Asia, where Europe and the United States have long grappled with a range of strategic and political differences. However, in light of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and the subsequent U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, the organisers decided to refocus the workshop around the specific theme of terrorism and asymmetric conflict in Southwest Asia. The workshop focused on both the global and regional aspects of the terrorist threat. The starting point for discussion was the observation that, despite significant U.S. military and economic investment in Southwest Asia since WWII, the region has not followed the path of Europe and East Asia in terms of either economic advancement or the development of stable, democratic structures. From a U.S. strategic perspective, Southwest Asian countries have not become valuable economic or political partners to the United States. Instead, the region has been the venue for crisis after crisis, crises that have required a series of costly U.S. military interventions. The continued instability of the region is likely to pose an even greater national security problem in the future, as the United States becomes increasingly dependent on the region’ supply of cheap oil – both to serve its own needs and those of its allies. At the same time, Southwest Asia’ lack of stability means that direct U.S. military intervention in the region is becoming an ever greater burden on the U.S. defence establishment. Intervention will become even more costly with the inevitable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the escalating terrorist threat.
