Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America

6. From the Cold War to the Global War on Terrorism

c h a p t e r s i x From the Cold War to the Global War on Terrorism The United States is in the early years of a long struggle, similar to what our country faced in the early years of the Cold War. . . . A new totalitarian ideology now threatens. . . . Its content may be different from the ideologies of the last century, but its means are similar: intolerance, murder, terror, enslavement, and repression. Like those who came before us, we must lay the foundations and build the institutions that our country needs to meet the challenges we face. —US National Security Strategy, 2006 For someone familiar with the history of US-Latin American relations, the new rhetoric of the war on terrorism sounds hauntingly familiar. —Kathryn Sikkink, 2004 In Cold War Latin America, interstate rivalries often persisted because state agencies on both sides had vested interests in maintaining the status quo of protracted conflict. Despite Latin American armed forces’ increasing attention to the threat of Communist insurgency, rapprochement between rival antiCommunist countries was a rare outcome, one that occurred only when state resource constraints forced policy tradeoffs, pressured state agencies to abandon their defense of rivalry, and opened domestic political space for leaders to achieve cooperative breakthroughs. What can these cases tell us about the prospects for overcoming contemporary international rivalries? Does parochial interest explain rivalry persistence despite common threat outside the context of Cold War Latin America, or are the guardian agencies I analyze in previous chapters unique to the civil-military politics of a particular region and age? 168 Rivalry and Alliance Politics In this chapter I argue that the era of global counterterrorism after September 11, 2001, presents important similarities with the Cold War, and that the persistence of rivalry among countries facing a common threat from local insurgencies linked to the networks and ideology of transnational jihad is as puzzling as intrabloc rivalries were during the long struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Rivalry among actual or prospective counterterrorism partners vastly complicates coalition-building efforts and threatens to undermine effective regional counterterrorism initiatives, so it presents a serious policy problem as well. The chapter proceeds in three sections. First, I compare the Cold War with the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), with respect to the potential for a common foe to cause rapprochement. I acknowledge the inherent flaws and dangers in uncritical reliance on historical analogies (as well as the conceptual problems with the GWOT label itself ), but I suggest that the two struggles have three main points in common: a protracted, global ideological struggle, a manifestation of common threat from local insurgent vanguards, and a central role for alliances and coalitions in countering that threat. Second, based on this analysis, I examine the set of rivalries as of 1999, identifying cases where insurgencies in Muslim countries might constitute common threats for rival governments. Third, I analyze one of these most likely cases, the rivalry between Morocco and Algeria. As in Cold War Latin America, rivalry continued despite a clear common threat, and the continuation of conflict benefitted powerful security agencies in each country. Also, Moroccan and Algerian diplomatic behavior suggests that failed rapprochement initiatives in 2003 and 2005 reflected, respectively , sabotage by state agencies and end runs by national leaders King Mohammed VI and Prime Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika. A resource curse, I suggest, is part of the problem: Algerian economic growth, fueled by oil export revenue, inhibits policy tradeoffs between internal and external security missions. In turn, this implies that US security assistance to the two countries, to subsidize counterterrorist operations in the sparsely populated deserts of the Maghreb, might unintentionally reinforce rivalry among allies. Insurgent Vanguards and Regional Coalitions in Two Eras No analogy in international politics should be applied uncritically, and the Cold War-GWOT comparison is no exception. However, recent efforts by the United States to assemble an effective coalition of allies against the common threat of Islamist terrorism do raise the question of whether rivalry among allies is likely to persist in the present era as it did during the Cold War. Analogical reasoning From the Cold War to the Global War on Terrorism 169 in international politics has serious consequences, as Yuen Foong Khong shows: analogies exert cognitive pressure on decision makers, limiting and directing their choice of policy options to...