Why al-Qaeda is Winning

One of al-Qaeda's major goals has been satisfied: America's economy is far weaker now than it was 10 years ago. In 1999, not only was the U.S. economy strong, president Bill Clinton thought the United States would be rid of its national debt by 2015. Today the economy is in a shambles, and the national debt has reached astronomical figures, standing at more than $14-trillion.

Of course, al-Qaeda cannot claim the sole credit for this, or even the primary credit. Woeful financial mismanagement on the federal government's part, allowing spending to reach unprecedented levels while taxes were slashed, drove up the national debt. Meanwhile, an unregulated market for subprime lending by major financial institutions produced an enormous bubble that burst to the detriment of the entire economy. But our massive spending on intelligence, homeland security and other counterterrorism needs has certainly been a contributing factor. “I don't think it's sustainable over time,” former Homeland Security inspector-general Clark Kent Ervin said to me about current national security expenditures. “We really do have serious economic problems.”

National debt is not an inherent evil. Similar to a business borrowing money through the sale of stock, a government's borrowing can be seen as an investment in the economy's future. But the country's current staggering level of debt is far larger than one could see as a reasonable investment in America's economic future. Moreover, our national security expenditures are defensive in nature: Rather than building up infrastructure and the kinds of assets that are suggestive of prudent investment, they are designed only to prevent hostile forces from taking American lives and destroying American property.

The national debt threatens the U.S. fight against terrorism – indeed, threatens the nation's future – in multiple ways. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen has rightly called the U.S. national debt the number one national security threat that America faces. Osama bin Laden believed that American military might could not be sustained without a sound economy.

Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson agrees. He wrote in Newsweek in 2009 that America's “ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power.” Not mincing words, Ferguson added, “This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.” This is why, Ferguson says, voters are correct to worry about the U.S. debt crisis. “If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.”

Other observers agree that the U.S. defence budget is due for cuts that will hamper the country's ability to continue to project military power. “In the federal budget, built of great lumpy, immoveable blocks of medical care and pensions, something has to give,” the Times of London has noted, “and it's going to be defense.”

A June 2010 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments states, “Given the bleak U.S. fiscal outlook, and the need for major fiscal belt tightening, how likely is it that the American people will sustain a level of spending on national defense sufficient to maintain the military at its current size and enable it to modernize sufficiently to be able to address threats beyond our two current wars? The simple answer is: not likely at all.” Defence officials also believe that military spending will be cut.

By 2019, the annual interest on the national debt will be more than $700-billion, which is more than the current size of the Defense Department's entire budget. The New York Times anticipates that significant domestic political fights will result. “The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden,” it notes. But clearly these hard choices will not be confined to the domestic policy arena. America faces significant challenges from al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. How long can the United States remain engaged in all of these disparate regions? Who will pick up the slack?

Indeed, this is where the Soviet example is so haunting. The Soviet Union's collapse was brought about by spiralling public debt caused by the collapse of world oil prices (which depressed Soviet revenues) as well as a grain crisis. Rather than making hard choices – giving up its hold over Eastern Europe, rationing food or cutting its military-industrial complex – the Soviet Union decided to ignore the problem and borrow money from overseas, until its credit rating collapsed.

There are some differences in the situation that the United States confronts (it has been battered by high rather than low oil prices, for example), but overall, these parallels should trouble America. “If the deficit isn't reined in, investors eventually could refuse to continue lending Uncle Sam the money required to run the government – everything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare,” USA Today noted in August 2010. “Once ignited, wor-ries about U.S. creditworthiness could quickly snowball. The nightmare scenario: Investors shun U.S. government securities, forcing an abrupt resolution of the deficit via draconian spending cuts and tax increases like nothing in U.S. history.”

When we look at the differences between September 2001 and September 2011 from al-Qaeda's perspective, it is clear how much the jihadi group has gained relative to the U.S. Even though it has lost Osama bin Laden and its safe haven in Afghanistan, its fight against America is broader, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates are key players in more regions than they were engaged in a decade ago. Indeed, jihadi groups threaten to control territory in several of them.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is shattered, it faces an almost unthinkable debt burden and its policy makers have largely been consigned to arguing with each other on the sidelines as the country's traditional regional allies – Egypt's Mubarak, Tunisia's Ben Ali, Yemen's Saleh, and others – are overthrown or see their power erode. Although some observers think that these waves of change discredit al-Qaeda and will undermine it, the jihadi group thinks that they instead demonstrate America's decline. When al-Qaeda looks at the global landscape, it believes with reason that it is the United States, not al-Qaeda, that will have the most trouble adapting to the changes that are already upon us. That is why al-Qaeda believes, with justification, that it is winning.

Excerpted from Bin Laden's Legacy, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.