ARTICLE

October 2002

Washington Pulse

by Elizabeth Book

Gen. Keane: Enemies Underestimate U.S.
The September 11 attacks were a “tactical victory” for al Qaeda, but also a “strategic failure, because it will bring about the complete destruction of their infrastructure,” said Army Gen. John Keane.

“They believe we are vulnerable as a people, as a government and as a military, to this kind of incursion, because they believe we are morally weak,” Keane, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said in a recent speech. “They have miscalculated about this, ironically, similar to the same miscalculation that the Japanese and the Germans made during World War II.”

The Germans, Keane said, “were almost flippant about the United States military’s capabilities. They were caught up in their own errors. The Japanese were also very arrogant in their understanding of America,” he said.

“An unending series of Soviet leaders said the same thing about America’s people and its resolve, not understanding our government and our way of life here,” Keane said. The same is true for “a series of thugs we’ve been dealing with: Noriega in Panama, Saddam Hussein, and this latest thug Milosevic. All of them used fear as a weapon, and in every case underestimated America’s resolve to do something about it.”

Keane noted that the Army lost 75 people on 9/11, “which is more people that I’ve lost in 36 years in any one fight that we’ve been in.”

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Czech Republic Cancels Aircraft Procurement
Catastrophic floods throughout Europe—causing extensive property damage throughout Slovakia, Germany and the Czech Republic—prompted Czech Minister of Defense Jaroslav Tvrdik, to announce the likely cancellation of the purchase of 24 Gripen fighters for the Czech air force.

The approximately $3 billion in damages caused by the floods in the Czech Republic has forced the government to rearrange its budgetary priorities, said Petr Janousek, press officer at the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The Gripen—made by Saab Aerospace, of Sweden and BAE Systems, of the United Kingdom—would have replaced the Czech air force’s current fleet of MiG-21s, slated to be retired by 2004, Janousek said. If the Gripen deal is cancelled, the Czech government may decide to upgrade the MiG fleet.

BAE and Saab have offered the Czechs a new deal to purchase a smaller fleet of fighters.

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Directed Energy Viewed as ‘Transforming’
The United States must speed up development of directed-energy weapons, to stay ahead of potential enemies, said retired Air Force Gen. Ronald Fogleman.

“Directed-energy weapons [such as lasers] will be the cornerstone of America’s arsenal in the 21st century. … [They have] the potential to become the single most transforming weapon,” he told a conference sponsored by the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank.

He noted that further development is needed to make laser weapons a reality, however. “We understand the physics; it’s no longer an issue of technology. Now [the problem] is engineering,” he said.

The ability to get laser weapons to the battlefield “will be determined by our vision and determination,” he said.

Some non-lethal laser technologies have been tested in battle already, Fogleman said. Lasers were employed as tactical aids in Somalia, he said. In one instance, a laser was used as a spotlight to guide troops in the dark. The laser, invisible to the naked eye, could only be seen with night-vision goggles, he said.

Potential enemies of the United States are also investing in directed energy, Fogleman said. “I’m not in the camp of people who believe China is our enemy, but you can’t ignore their potential. I am led to believe that the Chinese are very actively working on these programs,” Fogleman said. Russia also had an extensive research program in this area, and “they’ve done a lot of work in the field of high-powered microwave.”

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U.S. Signs Anti-Terrorism Pact
An anti-terrorism agreement signed by Secretary of State Colin Powell with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), should be viewed as a “landmark” document, because it is the first of its kind encompassing the entire region, said Catharin Dalpino, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The pact calls for the parties to freeze the assets of terrorist groups, strengthen intelligence sharing and improve border patrols. The agreement “has even had a slight proliferation effect,” said Dalpino. No sooner was it signed that Beijing proposed a similar arrangement for the “Asean Plus Three group,” which informally links Southeast Asia to China, South Korea and Japan, she said.

However, Dalpino warned, the agreement is not a “cure-all” for the region’s efforts in fighting terrorism. Issues of concern for the U.S. government, she added, range “from porous borders to leaders who fear that cracking down on extremists will disturb a delicate balance within Muslim communities.”

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White House Advisor: ‘America’s Complacency Is Risky’
Philip Zelikow, a member of the president’s foreign intelligence advisory board, said that the United States has become complacent about al Qaeda, as it focuses on a possible war with Iraq. That approach is risky, he said. “We are in a race against time,” he told a symposium sponsored by the Brookings Institution.

Zelikow was a staff member at the National Security Council during the first Bush administration. He currently is a professor at the University of Virginia.

It should not take another terrorist attack to create the sense of urgency that occurred after the 9/11 events, he said. “We bought some time in our operations in Afghanistan; they don’t have the same capability now. But I don’t know if we have weeks or months,” he said.

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