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"Al Qaeda as Warfighting Entity," by George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 2 August 2005, http://junkpolitics.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/08/02/stratfor-geopolitical-intelligence-report-al-qaeda-as-warfig.html.

George Friedman, author of America's Secret War on geopolitical analyst recently sent out an email looking at the Global War on Terrorism. His conclusion: bin Laden is losing.

First, Friedman writes that the Global War on Terrorism is a real war

Karl von Clausewitz wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means. In order for the United States to be engaged in a war with al Qaeda, three things seem to be necessary.

• Al Qaeda must be an entity that is capable of making and enforcing decisions. There can be no war without strategy and tactics, and no strategy and tactics without a command structure.
  
• Al Qaeda must have political goals that are in some sense practical. Punishing the infidel is not a political goal: It is not intended to achieve a political outcome, nor is it intended to create or influence regimes.
  
• Al Qaeda must have a warfighting strategy that it is pursuing. Its actions must fit into the paradigm of war and make sense from a military standpoint.

In our view, all three of these criteria are met. This does not mean that al Qaeda will or won't be successful; it simply means that al Qaeda's behavior can be properly understood in terms of war.

Second, al Qaeda has achievable goals

Al Qaeda also has political goals. Indeed, it differs from prior groups that used terror tactics by the fact that it embarked on the war with political goals. The long-term goal -- creating a caliphate encompassing all the lands it deems to be part of the dominion of Islam -- was not the immediate goal. Rather, al Qaeda's immediate goal was to increase the effective Islamist opposition to existing Muslim regimes to force at least one successful uprising. The means toward that end were two-fold: First, to demonstrate in the Muslim world the vulnerability of the United States -- the patron of many of these existing regimes -- and second, to force a response from the United States that would increase either contempt or effective hostility among Muslims. If the United States refused combat, this would be a sign that it was a paper tiger. If it surged into the Islamic world, this would prove the United States was the enemy. Either way, al Qaeda thought it would win.

Third, al Qaeda's mistake was assuming that hatred and distrust of America would translate into anti-American attacks

If they made an error, it was only in assuming that genuine anti-Americanism and hatred of local regimes supported by the United States would translate into effective anti-Americanism that could be leveraged to al Qaeda's advantage. Public sentiment matters in democratic regimes; it doesn't matter in warfare very much. Consider: Most of Europe hated the Germans and their occupation during World War II. Anti-German feeling was overwhelming. Nevertheless, this did not translate into effective anti-German sentiment. European states were never in a position to overthrow German power. That required an external intervention. In Vietnam, on the other hand, anti-Americanism proved effective: It turned into a warfighting process.

Fourth, the only place al Qaeda has been close to successful has been in the Sunni Arab provinces of Iraq

Where al Qaeda miscalculated was in assuming that sentiment would turn into effective sentiment. Thus far, except in four Sunni provinces in Iraq, that hasn't happened. But that it didn't happen was neither pre-ordained nor obvious. Al Qaeda knew what it was doing.

Conclusion: America is winning

At this point, al Qaeda is losing the war from the standpoint of its own strategic goals. No Muslim regime has fallen since Sept. 11, save two -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- that fell to the United States. The Iraqi resistance showed extreme promise for a very long time, given American miscalculations. Anti-Americanism had turned effective. However, the shifting calculus among the Sunni elders has threatened to undermine support for al Qaeda's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the Sunni nationalist insurgency -- onto which al Qaeda has clamped parasitically -- has been in danger of disruption. This, coupled with serious breaches in al Qaeda's global system, forced the group into a desperate counteroffensive.

The Euphrates War truly is the central front in the Global War on Terrorism.

"Epilogue," by George Friedman, America's Secret War, http://www.americassecretwar.com/about_book_finalchapter.html, 4 October 2004.

Coming Anarchy must be on a George Friedman kick, first with a dual-review of America's Secret War and Thomas P.M. Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map, and then with a shout-out to his dated The Coming War With Japan.

I do not know what to make of Friedman. While my reaction to The Pentagon's New Map was the sort of rah-rah enthusiasm I last had for The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and I met Embracing Defeat was the slack-jawed horror similar to We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Murdered With Our Families, the epilog to America's Secret War was a strange combination: slack-jawed enthusiasm. I do not know what to make of it. I will need to buy the full book to understand the author's arguments (unlike the ignoramouses at Washington Monthly, I like to know what I am talking about). But for now, some excerpts with minimal comments

The Two Foes

BETWEEN AUGUST AND OCTOBER 2004 , all eyes were focused on the Iraq campaign. The basic strategic reality, however, on October 1, 2004, is this: Al Qaeda has failed to achieve its strategic goals; there has been no rising in the Islamic world; virtually all Muslim intelligence services are working with the United States against Al Qaeda; and Al Qaeda’s credibility and operational integrity are being questioned everywhere.

On the other hand, the United States has not achieved its own fundamental strategic goal: It cannot guarantee the security of the United States against an Al Qaeda attack. It has not broken Al Qaeda with any degree of confidence. Indeed, in the worst-case scenario, it has not been able to guarantee that Al Qaeda
does not have weapons of mass destruction.

The Most Dangerous Month

Credibility, timing and the reality on the ground made it imperative for Al Qaeda to do something, and to do it before the U.S. election. Now, there is a peculiarity about American political life. In the immediate wake of any national crisis, a president’s approval rating soars, as Americans rally around him. Over the next months, depending on the president’s performance, that approval can bleed off rapidly. Therefore, attacking immediately before the election would increase Bush’s chances of winning. Attacking weeks or, better yet, months ahead of the elections could potentially destroy his chances of winning.

The United States is not Spain. The question among analysts was whether Al Qaeda knew this. After
studying the documents about Spain, most analysts were unprepared to dismiss Al Qaeda’s intellectual
capabilities. It was assumed—with good reason, considering the sources in the United States—that Al Qaeda
had a sophisticated understanding of American political culture. This meant, in practical terms, that Al Qaeda
would attack—if it could—by August 31, in order to allow enough time for Bush’s support to bleed off. In
fact, the assumption was that the ideal time was in early August, simply from the standpoint of political
effectiveness.

Worst-Case Scenarios

It came down to this. It had to be assumed that there was a direct threat to the United States. You had to go with the worst-case scenario. You didn’t know for sure who was a threat and who wasn’t. In the best of all worlds, you would wait until you got clarity. But in the summer of 2004, waiting had become an unaffordable luxury. Moving against known networks, regardless of how uncertain the knowledge, might disrupt an attack. Waiting and watching might improve knowledge in the long run, but the long run was a long way off. Therefore the argument was decided in favor of the security people. The United States was going to try to disrupt al Qaeda’s network using imperfect knowledge and imprecise tools.

U.S. intelligence had a blurry vision of Al Qaeda, but it wasn’t completely blind. On the other hand, al Qaeda could not be certain exactly how much the United States knew. Since it was risk-averse, it also drew worst-case conclusions. An interesting statistical game began. In July, the United States, working with regional intelligence and security services, began arresting suspected Al Qaeda members. From Pakistan to Virginia, people who had been on watch lists were being interrogated, arrested, deported to other countries and generally rousted about.

The United States knew that many of them had little or no connection to Al Qaeda. On the other hand, it
had enough intelligence to know that statistically, some of them had to be deeply involved. Precisely who was
involved was unclear, but the odds were that some of those being interrogated or arrested were involved.

The United States knew that Al Qaeda was watching the global operation—and that while the United States might be unclear on who was who, Al Qaeda was not unclear. They knew if the United States had captured someone significant. What they did not know is if the United States knew who they had. Neither did they know if the person might have talked. However, working from worst-case, they had to assume both, and therefore any operation that these people might be involved in or have knowledge of had to be aborted.

That was the U.S. goal. They did not expect to destroy Al Qaeda. They did expect to disrupt its security system sufficiently to abort operations that were planned prior to the election. Starting in July and peaking in early August, the United States and its allies rolled up network after network—with the networks being generously defined. Some intelligence was gained, but the hope was—and this was reasonable—that Al Qaeda’s knowledge of its own network would cause it to shut down operations.

Our real Iraq goals, Iran's real Iraq goals, Sistani's real Iraq goals?

As we have discussed, the primary point of the war was not to stabilize Iraq, and certainly not to democratize it. The primary goal was to create a base of operations that would bring overwhelming pressure to bear on Saudi Arabia, as well as on Syria and Iran. The administration’s surprise over guerrilla war in Iraq caused it to lose its balance and allow mission creep—from strategic bases to democracy. But beneath the perception, the reality of Iraq, while not pleasant, was not as bad as it appeared.

The last three months have been spent on three issues. First, and most important, they were spent in defining Iran’s role in Iraq and the role of the Shiite community. In April 2004, the United States reversed itself on guarantees made to the Iranians and Iraqi Shia about domination of the Iraqi government. This occurred in the context of a rising by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army in Najaf. The rising was encouraged by Iran and the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Both were hoping that the rising would be crushed by the Americans, but would increase U.S. dependence on Sistani and Iran. The exact opposite happened: The United States refused to deal with Sadr, leaving him to fester, and refused to deal with Iran and Sistani.

The weaking insurgency? The worst insurgency? The clock-work insurgency?

There had been three major guerrilla offensives in Iraq. There was the Ramadan offensive of October-
November 2003. There was the Fallujah-Najaf offensive in April. And there has been the September-October
election offensive. It is interesting to note that the offensives were divided by four months, end to beginning.
That is not accidental. It took that long to recruit and train fresh recruits. It was also interesting to note that
each offensive was weaker than the preceding one.

The Ramadan offensive was a massive surprise, and created near panic in the U.S. command structure.
While geographically contained, it was intense and effective, involving larger units as well as small units. The
April offensive had a relatively lower level of violence, although more widely dispersed. The election
offensive, while perceived to be uncontrolled, was actually significantly weaker in small unit operations and
concentrated on relatively low-risk bombings and kidnappings.