New Totalitarians: Social Identities and Radical Islamist Political Grand Strategy

摘要

Academic and journalistic critics of the American Long War on Terrorism (LWT) who are calling for negotiations with radical Islamist groups, to attempt to appease such groups by meeting their allegedly limited demands, or to accept that they do not represent a major threat to the United States and its interests, are fundamentally wrong. There are many reasons for this, but the major flaw in such reasoning is a lack of understanding of the ideologically-driven grand political strategy of the Islamist extremists, which represents a totalitarian, transnational, and, in many versions, universalist social revolutionary movement. Moderate rationalists have difficulty understanding the rigidity of historical necessity or moral imperatives in the totalitarian mindset. Policy advice that flows from such misunderstanding is therefore fatuous, if not dangerous. A proper understanding of the grand political strategy chosen by the terrorists is a prerequisite for constructing effective counter policies. Dr. Macdonald argues that the first thing to understand about the enemy is that there is nothing to negotiate with them because of their radical totalitarian nature. The debate over grand strategy in the 'Long War on Terrorism' is a robust one. Dr. Macdonald's use of social identity theory to provide a framework to understand the terrorist enemy and how to deal with him moves that debate forward.