In his Nov. 15 testimony before a Senate committee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lamented the West's weak response to Iran, saying that "time is not on our side." Iran has been testing intermediate range missile systems as it reaches for nuclear capabilities. "There has also been a report," said Gingrich, "that Iran ... may be testing the capability to launch a surprise attack on the United States from a merchant ship off our coasts." Citing the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, Gingrich noted, "An attack by a single Iranian nuclear missile could have a catastrophic impact on the United States.... Such an attack could quickly turn a third or more of the United States back to a 19th Century level of development."
A nuclear EMP missile, launched from an ordinary freighter, could knock out transformers and electrical switching stations. "Without electricity," Gingrich explained, "hospitals would fail, water and sewage services would fail, gas stations would be unable to provide petroleum, trucks would not be able to distribute food supplies, and essential services would disintegrate." American society rests on an electricity-dependent infrastructure. The whole requires the electrification of the parts. If you eliminate the electronics, you eliminate the infrastructure and put the country on an even footing with the Third World.
Is America, then, a palace of glass - a system that is beautiful so long as it works, but fragile and ultimately doomed? In the long run, the described attack (or one very similar) will almost certainly take place. Like so many public servants, Gingrich sees the threat. His analysis, however, doesn't follow his own logic to the end. He thinks in terms of religious conflicts that occurred between Christian sects, forgetting the comparative brutality of the East and the incomparable destructiveness of today's WMD arsenals. One should consider, in this regard, the destructiveness of wars between radically different faiths.
"It is stunningly hard to win a war of ideology where the enemy is religiously motivated," said Gingrich. So what is America's motivation? The American religious impulse has, in large part, given way to a politics of competing ideologies. The schools and universities in America inculcate a multicultural, secular ethic. Freedom and democracy (devoid of specific content) are held up as banners, but to fight Islam realistically means that the United States must fashion an ideology that adopts what Gingrich calls a "coherent theory of victory." It is doubtful that any such ideology exists apart from the claim that democracy's triumph is "inevitable." Besides, the political left will always insist that any such pronouncement merely advances the cause of American "imperialism." Meanwhile, the American shopper looks down at the "MADE IN CHINA" label on his purchase and knows with certainty that ideological questions are too boring for serious consideration.
I do not believe the war between radical Islam and America will last 30 to 70 years because a greater war is brewing. The world economy is not stable, the U.S. has unacknowledged great power rivals and its moral decline signifies the approaching end of republican government. Bigger challenges loom on the horizon. Besides, Islam is not a world power to be ranked with the United States, Russia, China or India. Islam cannot even eliminate tiny Israel. Gingrich's belief in a 30 to 70-year-struggle with radical Islam assumes the continuance of the American economic system with its vulnerable infrastructure and permeable political process. On account of these factors, the balance of power in the world is about to shift. And if it shifts away from the United States a new order will arise. When that happens the radical Islamists will find themselves up against the Chinese and the WMD arsenal of the Russian Federation. Moscow and Beijing are not constrained by Western political ideals or values. If Islam became an obstacle to Russia or China, Islam would face a systematic genocide.
Gingrich says that America must persuade "Russia of the nature of [the Islamic] threat and the danger it poses to Russia." Though Russia is supplying nuclear technology to Iran, Mr. Gingrich believes that he understands Russian interests better than the Russians. To persuade Russia, he says, "requires the United States to give much greater consideration to Russian needs and desires." But Gingrich doesn't seem to know what these "needs and desires" are. He refuses to see that Russia is helping Islam to destroy America, and any consideration shown to Russia will only accelerate the process.
Already the American side has forked out billions for Russia's cooperation, but Russia continues to help America's enemies. Gingrich talks about the massacring of Russian children last year at Beslan. But President Putin has indirectly blamed the United States for this and other acts of terrorism on Russian soil. The attitude of Russia itself is suggestive: According to a poll conducted last January by the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Study, 42 percent of Russians think their country needs another Josef Stalin to lead them. And maybe that's what they've got. On March 14 Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov wrote that "every decent person must stand up and resist the rise of the Putin dictatorship."
Russia's support for Iran is part of a larger strategy. For Mr. Gingrich to describe Iran's growing capabilities while suggesting a deal with the very people who are expanding those capabilities, is to misunderstand the problem altogether. The Iranian problem is tucked inside a larger problem, and nobody in Washington wants to deal with it.
