U.S. rethink on military action?

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, SEPT. 27. The Bush administration is making it clear that the U.S. will be very careful about how it goes about the exercise of rooting out terrorism. It is now trying to dispel the impression that an imminent military action is necessary. The message is that the war against terrorism is multi-faceted, the military being only one of the several components.

``I think it cannot be stressed enough that everybody who is waiting for military action... needs to rethink this thing,'' the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, said in Brussels after a meeting with Defence Ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

The President, Mr. George W. Bush, not long ago argued that it really made no sense for a million dollar Cruise missile to be chasing ten dollar tents.

There are different aspects to what is taking place here and in the operational muscle that is being put in place in and around Afghanistan, mainly in the forward bases of the U.S. in West Asia, in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. One view is that the military operations may have already begun, with the Special Forces of the U.S. and the U.K. having entered select areas of Afghanistan.

The expectations of a military strike and perhaps even the impatience aside, there is no question that the Bush administration is finding this coalition building a difficult task. Foreign leaders visiting Washington in the recent past have had very little problem talking about being on the side of America on terrorism. However, many want details of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda's direct involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. before embarking on any major military show of force. And the U.S. is not really too keen to show the ``evidence,'' not because there was none, but out of fear of exposing its intelligence gathering mechanisms.

But for those nations which really did not have a choice in backing the U.S. or were desperate to settle regional scores, the response to any possible military action has not been forthcoming, from America's allies in Europe and from among the Arab world. Cooperation from allies has already started on other fronts, especially in the realm of intelligence and in following the financial trail.

In terms of the scenarios for Afghanistan, the Bush administration, while flirting with the Northern Alliance and almost any group that may have anti-Taliban credentials, is also exploring the possibility of generating momentum within Afghanistan so that the Taliban leadership itself would crack, leaving the more ``moderate'' ones to come out.

Washington does not want to antagonise Islamabad by opening aligning with the Northern Alliance. The administration is also quite wary of taking on a nation-building role, something that Republicans have been too quick to criticise the Clinton administration.

Politically, the Bush administration has broad bi- partisan support, but this did not mean that Capitol Hill has given a blank cheque to the White House to go about the crisis as it wished. As it is, many senior Democrats are miffed that their Republican colleagues are not playing their side of bipartisanship in a fair fashion. And senior Republicans like Senator John McCain have told the administration to stay focused - on Afghanistan, and not get carried away into other places like Iraq.

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