The Global War on Terrorism: Idealogy as its Strategic Center of Gravity

Abstract

Abstract : The National Security Strategy (NSS) for the United States of September 2002 stated that defending the Nation against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government and that the primary threat is from terrorists. The global war on terrorism (GWOT) is a test of our national will and one that requires the employment of all the nation's instruments of power. However before we can employ instruments of power against an enemy it must be determined clearly against what sources of their strength and weakness are we directing our power. We must be certain that we are targeting that one critical source of strength their strategic center of gravity. The NSS states that the GWOT is against a politically motivated network of terrorists with global reach and not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. This means that unlike prior enemies there is no clear state for the U.S. to direct its national powers against but instead a loose organization of groups. Without a dear idea of what is the unifying factor(s) for these terrorist groups their center(s) of gravity or the source(s) of their power there exists a possibility that our national power employment efforts may be misdirected marginalized or even counterproductive. If the grand strategy is silent on this unifying power issue it leaves the components of the federal government to decide for themselves the enemy's centers of gravity on the strategic operational and tactical level. This lends itself to misdirection if diverse and conflicting centers of gravity are determined but not coordinated by U.S elements. The purpose of this paper is fourfold: first to analyze the issue of centers of gravity to determine if it is possible that ideology can be a center of gravity (COG); second to determine if ideology is the COG for global terrorists; third to identify which ideology is that unifying ideology; fourth to present response strategies against the determined center(s) of gra7