The National Interest

A long time from now people will probably look back upon our era as one of the few great turning points—and perhaps the greatest turning point—in history. They will perhaps look at it as the age when the human race rescued itself from collective madness and self-destruction by the skin of its teeth. How? By woman power, entering into all its affairs, its concerns, its ideas, in entirely new ways.
—Konrad Kellen, The Coming Age of Woman Power

KONRAD KELLEN got it right most of the time. He left Germany in 1933—immediately upon Hitler’s appointment as chancellor and, by emigrating to the United States, avoided the terrible fate of European Jewry under Nazi rule. Three decades later as a counterinsurgency analyst at the Santa Monica, California, headquarters of the RAND Corporation, assessing Vietcong morale and motivation, he was among the first to conclude—in 1965—that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Kellen went on to become among the most astute analysts of terrorism, and the reports that he wrote for RAND’s U.S. government clients in the late 1970s and early 1980s identified trends that we see clearly manifested today. Yet, as the above quote suggests, his 1972 book heralding a new era of peace and prosperity, unparalleled human and scientific development, and the various other benefits that a world soon to be led and governed by women would surely entail, proved to be one of the few monumental trends of the twentieth century that he got completely, totally and utterly wrong.

Indeed, if Kellen were alive today he would be surprised how marginally the status of women in American society has changed. To be sure, there are far more women in the workplace today than there were thirty-seven years ago. The number of women who now adroitly, if not successfully, balance family and job responsibilities would have been unimaginable then. And, in the past year alone, a woman credibly ran for president and one less credibly for vice president. Finally, three women have been entrusted by President Obama with responsibility for America’s foreign policy, homeland security and the conduct of U.S. diplomacy at the United Nations. Yet, it remains undeniable that with respect to both governance and the formulation and execution of policy, the United States remains, if no longer the exclusively male domain it once was, then at least still an overwhelmingly male one. Indeed, a report by the World Economic Forum recently concluded that: “Women still lag far behind men in top political and decision-making roles even though their access to education and health care is nearly equal. . . .” Thus, even in the aftermath of a presidential election where the need for change was the one thing that both candidates unambiguously agreed on and which, moreover, propelled the winner into the White House, the prospect of any significant near-term recalibration of gender governmental responsibilities over matters both big and small beyond these three senior-level nominees is nonexistent. Witness President Obama’s first press conference three days after the election, where his much-heralded economic-advisory team was introduced. Three are women. Nearly five times as many, or fourteen, are men. In this respect, it is highly unlikely that the current gender imbalance in force at the State Department, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Mission to the United Nations will change in any appreciable way soon, despite the formidable women heading each.

With the publication of both Peggy Noonan’s Patriotic Grace and Gina M. Bennett’s National Security Mom, one is reminded of Kellen’s cri de coeur for the different approach that women—and particularly mothers—might bring to typically machismo-laden, muscle-flexing issues involving diplomacy, fiscal policy and especially national security beyond a handful of cabinet appointments. Even if Kellen’s “age of woman power” has not yet come to pass, his conviction that women offer a unique and perhaps invaluable perspective on questions of national security and counterterrorism is the cornerstone of both the Noonan and Bennett books.

Noonan is of course widely known as one of the clearest and most perspicacious columnists around today. The most enthusiastic, genuine and compelling cipher of the Reagan Revolution—which she witnessed firsthand as presidential speechwriter—and author of several more books, Noonan now writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal, “Declarations.” Its devoted readers are drawn to Noonan for the firmly gentle grip that she perceptively has on America’s pulse. There is perhaps no one better able to illuminate and elucidate the spectrum of issues, both great and mundane, that concern Americans and define America today. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Noonan, no one can deny that her columns don’t cut quickly to the chase: eschewing the snarkiness and self-righteousness that passes for commentary elsewhere and instead cogently identifying exactly where we are as a country and a people at a time when so many others are so completely lost.

No one will likely have ever heard of Bennett nor ever read anything that she’s written despite an equally long and distinguished career. This is not surprising since Bennett has worked for some two decades as an analyst in the U.S. intelligence community: one of the nameless heroes in a necessarily faceless bureaucracy whose written work is uniformly highly classified and distributed on a strictly limited, need-to-know basis. But make no mistake—Bennett, in her own unique way and in her own unique, hermetically sealed environment, is as heavy a hitter and trenchant an analyst as Noonan. Indeed, Bennett is among the very few who can accurately claim to have “connected the dots” prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks. And she did so nine years before those planes slammed into the twin towers and the Pentagon and plummeted to earth in a dirt field.

A recently declassified assessment that Bennett wrote in 1993, titled “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” is excerpted in her book. It clearly shows that at least someone in the vast, windowless corridors that comprise this community in fact understood the threat and the manner in which it would unfold—with all its tragic consequences. “Numerous wealthy patrons of the Afghan cause,” Bennett explained, “particularly from Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, reportedly support the ongoing mujahidin effort as part of their generosity to Islamic movements worldwide. . . . Among private donors to the new generation, Usama Bin Laden is particularly famous for his religious zeal and financial largess.” Accordingly, in the assessment Bennett concluded:

The growing perception by Muslims that the U.S. follows a double standard with regard to Islamic issues—particularly in Iraq, Bosnia, Algeria, and the Israeli-occupied territories—heightens the possibility that Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims’ wrath. Afghan war veterans, scattered through the world, could surprise the U.S. with violence in unexpected locales.

Lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, proved to be precisely those locales.

Thus, coming at national security and counterterrorism from two different directions, both authors arrive at the same place: the conviction that something has gone terribly wrong in America and its war on terrorism and therefore that profound changes in our attitude and approach are required. It is difficult to disagree with them. Seven years into a global war on terrorism, the United States is at a crossroads. The sustained successes of the war’s early phases (e.g., between October 2001 and March 2003) are now challenged by an al-Qaeda that has regrouped and reorganized along the lawless tribal border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan and is once again threatening. “Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas,” Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, lamented in November 2008 in a major public address before a Washington, DC, audience.

Indeed, if 9/11 has taught us anything, it is that al-Qaeda is most dangerous when it has a sanctuary or safe haven from which to operate—as it now indisputably does. Further, al-Qaeda-affiliated and -associated groups, like al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and Lashkar-e-Taiba, are more active and potentially consequential in different areas of the globe. Perhaps most important, however, is that the broader movement’s ability to continue to appeal to its hard-core political base (and thus ensure a flow of recruits into its ranks, money into its coffers, and support among its core base for its aims and objectives) guarantees that this struggle will neither abate on its own accord or be easily—and quickly—defeated.

Even though there has been no successful terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11, the confidence and certitude that America was on the right track with the war on terrorism only a few years ago has now mostly eroded. A poll commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation shortly before the recent presidential election bears this out. A third of Americans surveyed, for example, believed that al-Qaeda was actually stronger today than it was on 9/11 and another 30 percent thought that the war on terrorism had in fact no effect on it. Even more worrisome is the fact that, seven years after nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and changed the course of history, only 5 percent of voters polled on election day thought terrorism an issue worthy of their concern.

The immense danger posed by this complacency along with a failure to learn from history is at the heart of Noonan’s book. Its message, in a nutshell, is that in the aftermath of the most important—and divisive—presidential election in memory, Americans have to come together on issues large and small, but especially on those regarding our national security. According to Noonan, we are again drifting along in a self-delusional daze of impregnability, accepting mindless, cosmetic security measures that masquerade as effective defense but actually lay bare our vulnerability to an even more catastrophic attack.

Noonan articulates this both brilliantly and evocatively in the book’s opening pages. “Where is America?” she asks,

America is on line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. . . . And, as always America thinks: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and embarrassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would even admit privately that all this harassment is only the government’s way of showing that it is “fair,” of demonstrating that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line. . . .

NOONAN’S DOUR airport experiences, or “The View from Gate 14,” as she terms America’s new Main Street, will resonate with anyone who has traveled by air in this country during the past seven years and felt the same loss of dignity that she so accurately describes. “All the frisking, beeping, and patting down is demoralizing to our society,” she observes,

It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that politics has lessened everything, including human dignity. . . . Our leaders are now removed from all this, removed from life as we live it each day.

But anyone who reads Noonan’s columns knows that she is not a whiner or a complainer. She is a doer and a fixer. And the task facing Americans today, in her eyes, is as big and important as storming the beaches at Normandy. It is strengthening America and moving beyond the paralysis of fear and the comfort of superficial security bromides to ensure that this country is adequately prepared to meet and deal with the terrorist threats we surely will continue to face in the future. “I believe we have to assume that something bad is going to happen, someday, to us,” Noonan explains,

We have to assume, I think, that it will be a 9/11 times ten, or a hundred, or more, and that it will have a deeply destabilizing effect on our country; that it will test our unity and endurance, our resourcefulness and faith. . . . And yet in some deep way our politics do not reflect our knowledge. It’s odd. Stunning, actually. We keep going through the same old motions in the bitter old ways.

For Noonan, it is imperative that we grasp the importance of the abiding threat of terrorism—and indeed the looming possibility of the ultimate threat of nuclear terrorism—but that we do not let it overwhelm us. “We need the best possible defense, coupled with an attitude of wisdom, forbearance, and peacefulness toward the world. A civil defense system worthy of the name.” Mere preparedness or foresight, however, is only part of what is required according to Noonan. We have to start all over again: reassessing what security means and how best to attain it; understanding that America’s survival may be predicated as much on our ability to take a punch as to land one; taking the time and care to rebuild friendships and alliances so that we can regain the international respect essential for effective multilateral cooperation against terrorism.

The legacy of the president or his successor, Noonan argues, will likely be “determined by one thing: how he handles and leads us through the next attack on America.” He—and we—need, she concludes, “a kind of patriotic grace, a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we’re in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative.”

IN National Security Mom, Bennett tells us how to acquire that grace. Her book proceeds from a deceptively simple, but nonetheless trenchant, observation:

Over the years, I have come to realize that everything I ever needed to know about national security, I learned from [parenting my five children]. And all we need to do as a nation to ensure our security is to follow the advice we give our children. If only we had the courage to do it.

To the young U.S. Army lieutenant wearing full body armor in 120 degree heat while leading a patrol through the Jamilla market in Baghdad’s Sadr City or the SEAL Team Six commando trawling for Taliban in the forested hillocks of Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley that argument may sound completely fatuous. But tempting as it is to dismiss Bennett’s advice for kids and country alike—to tell the truth, clean up your own mess, don’t give in to a bully, choose your friends wisely and let actions speak louder than words—as glib homilies, the parallels between raising children one can be proud of and having the perspective and grace required to better safeguard our nation are more relevant than one might otherwise imagine.

National Security Mom explains how this can be accomplished by describing how the basic rules that parents routinely establish for children can also be applied to making our nation strong and secure; how the lessons we teach our children not only make America stronger but help prepare our children to be the good citizens and leaders that America requires; and, finally, how parents—and especially mothers—throughout the country who generally feel estranged from the national-security process and excluded from important government decisions can feel and become more involved.

Good parenting, Bennett tells us, is about consistency and calm, firmness but fairness. The same characteristics apply to counterterrorism, she continues. The United States needs a clear and consistent foreign policy that is fair but determined and that is predicated on America’s fundamental values, which are demonstrated daily by our actions as well as our words both at home and abroad. Good listening, Bennett counsels, is required of both a good parent and a great nation. “Parenting a teenager can feel like navigating a difficult foreign relations crisis,” she writes,

You often feel you need a translator and a team of trained negotiators. Ignoring the communication challenge does not make it go away. Similarly, turning a blind eye to another population’s hostility toward America does not lessen the anger. It only guarantees the people will not listen to anything we have to say.

AVOIDING IMMEDIATE emotional overreaction and always being truthful are bedrock prerequisites for effective parenting as well as for good statecraft and sound national security. “Like parents, our leaders should not allow America to be boxed into a reactive mode because of the actions of a handful of violent people,” Bennett advises. “If we do, we are allowing the terrorists to diminish our freedom of choice.” Like Noonan, Bennett also believes we are in danger because of our woeful ignorance of our nation’s core strengths—and our inclination at times to give in to terrorist “bullying”: “Terrorism scares us personally, but it doesn’t threaten our identity or shake our faith in democracy. If it did, then we should just hand bin Laden the keys to our country.”

Both Patriotic Grace and National Security Mom ultimately conclude that it is not just improved physical security and an aggressive counterterrorism strategy that will protect America. Real security, Noonan and Bennett argue, comes only from living and implementing, embodying and projecting the core principles on which our country was founded. “Our nation’s security is not dependent upon the lack of terrorist attacks,” Bennett believes,

Our security rests with the endurance of our values and principles of democracy and our commitment to them. Our strength is not a projection of power or the absence of challenge. It is the character our nation demonstrates when challenged that makes America strong and secure.

Noonan similarly argues that “We are Americans and mean to make [America] better. We long to put the past few years behind us, move on, and write something good on the page we sense turning.”

The appointments of Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano and Susan Rice arguably represent the turning of this page in American foreign, national- and homeland-security policies. How they fulfill those mandates, discharge their responsibilities and succeed in an environment that many would regard as equally hostile and skeptical of women in power as of American power will likely determine whether Kellen’s vision is ever rewarded or remains forever unrequited.

Ernest Hemingway defined courage as “grace under pressure.” It was a formulation that John F. Kennedy used in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Profiles In Courage, and that went on to encapsulate a previous era of seminal change in politics and policy that JFK’s own “New Frontier” heralded. During the dark days following the 9/11 attacks, when the world seemed turned upside down, the behavior of both America and its leaders conformed magnificently to that aspiration. In the years since, however, with the news of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, corrupted intelligence and precipitous action, many voters concluded in the recent presidential election that we had lost that moral compass and were adrift politically, economically, and in terms of our foreign policy and national security. Patriotic Grace and National Security Mom both offer prescriptions not just for improvement, but for redemption. Despite deceptively simple messages, these books offer useful guides for all of us to help build a safer, more secure and, most importantly, morally strong and superbly confident America.

Bruce Hoffman, a contributing editor to The National Interest, is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. His first job in Washington was working for Congresswoman Bella Abzug in 1975.