Bin Laden Is Dead But Counterterrorism Persists

U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed that bin Laden, the founder of the al-Qaida terrorist organization, has been executed in a raid by the CIA and remarked that that this is a righteous sanction for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Americans might feel that they are at long last avenged, but the very source of terrorism has yet to be eliminated despite the death of the top terrorist leader. This belated yet righteous sanction, however, would very likely have a great impact on America’s global strategy layout.

The death of bin Laden “marks the most significant achievement to date” in America’s effort to defeat the al-Qaida organization, remarked Obama. In terms of terrorism, however, its cause varies in the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Despite the fact that bin Laden has vanished from the surface of the earth, as long as such factors as religion, race, disparity between the rich and the poor and various social injustices continue to exist, successors of terrorists will inevitably continue to spring up, let alone the already existing extremists of anti-socialism and anti-statism in the European, American, Latin American and African societies. Since a complete elimination of the origin of terrorism is rather impossible, mankind thus must be prepared not only to expect but also to fight terrorism to the end.

What is more horrifying, however, compared to terrorism and terrorist attacks, is the rise of state terrorism. As of today, America is unable to put a halt to Iran and North Korea; this has propelled them even more greatly in the direction of state terrorism as wielders of power with massive destructive weapons. Toward the end of the Clinton administration, toleration of development of nuclear weapons in Pakistan greatly encouraged North Korea and Iran to actively pursue the goal of becoming possessors of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, the nuclear treaty that the Bush administration sought to sign with India is no different from giving tacit recognition to India’s status as a nuclear empire alongside the nuclear club that consists of China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia.

Possession of nuclear weapons will no doubt add impetus to terrorism. Moreover, under the circumstances whereby a nuclear vehicle is lacking precision, mankind globally will not only have to deal with the threat of the mushroom cloud but will also be more unable to attain the goal of escaping the nuclear winter. While North Korea and Iran are working toward becoming wielders of powers by possessing nuclear weapons, nations that are incapable of developing such weapons might be compelled to seek to develop biological weapons with the hope of — by means of these massive destructive weapons — resisting nuclear extorts from other nations or to threaten others.

The death of bin Laden has at least demonstrated that Bush’s counterterrorism battle is not entirely ridiculous. Toward the end of his term, when he fervently held up the banner of counterterrorism, he had at least accomplished the following: he garrisoned troops in the vicinities of Pakistan and Afghanistan to round up the leader of al-Qaida — and as a result, they became too caught up in and were exhausted by their bombings to launch another grand-scale terrorist attack; until the last day of his term, there was not another great terrorist attack in the vicinity of the U.S.; finally, on the surface, to say the very least, he successfully cut off any grand collusion among the terrorist syndicates in Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia and prevented the nightmare of what the late Professor Huntington described as the clash of civilizations from becoming a reality. Although the forgery of intelligence in the Iraq War was severely criticized both internationally and domestically, the accomplishment achieved in terms of the global counterterrorism cannot be disregarded.

Although benefiting from his predecessor, Obama, while enjoying the fruits of victory in this global counterterrorism struggle, has to shoulder the more and more difficult undertaking of counterterrorism with great caution and trepidation. We can get an idea of how he understands his new duty from the commands that he issued to the legations and consulates throughout the U.S., not to mention airports, ports and the U.S. military bases worldwide to heighten their alert in order to avert attacks from al-Qaida. In terms of the global strategy layout of the U.S., bin Laden’s death gives Obama an excuse to evacuate troops from Afghanistan and Iraq and thus allows America to enjoy more freedom and flexibility in its military deployment.

The authorities in Beijing have, since the beginning of the global counterterrorism battle, observed and speculated that American troops might get entangled in the mire of Afghanistan and Pakistan and that it would be extremely hard for them to extricate themselves from that prolonged situation — this would mean a great advantage for the global strategy layout of China. As an important ally of mainland China, Pakistan has actively cooperated with the Beijing strategy. Fearing that the U.S. might no longer value Pakistan should they have to execute bin Laden, Islamabad decided to only turn in to specialized squads of the U.S. fragments of information of the whereabouts of al-Qaida’s secondary leaders instead of bin Laden’s whereabouts that they had long ago had identified. This time, America has executed bin Laden once and for all and avenged the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This demonstrates the great revenge of Washington, which shows that any attackers of the U.S. would have to suffer; this is just like how America avenged Japan’s surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor by dropping two atomic bombs in Japan.

Although al-Qaida or terrorism of various forms will continue to pose a threat to the U.S. and other countries worldwide, the execution of the prime culprit will no doubt add a great boost to U.S. policy and its strategy of returning to Asia; the first one to be affected by this should be mainland China in emergence. Beijing has to make a decision between remaining at peace with Washington and challenging the economic gains of the U.S. and its allies in East Asia.

(The author is a professor of the Americas Research Center of Danjiang University.)